The End

You know what the end of civilization is going to be? It won't be nuclear war. It's not going to be the rapture or the events according to the book of Revelations. Mayan's 2012 predictions? Large Hadron Collider? Nope. None of the above.

It's going to be spam. Not the processed and packaged meat product that's become a staple in the diet of many Pacific Island Nations, that's had songs (well, one song) sung about it.

I mean the unsolicited mail, email, blog postings, thread comments, anything that clutters up and gets in the way. Eventually, it's going to grow and grow and grow, taking up too much space, to much bandwidth, too much of our natural resources, to the extent that everything will end.

Your email inbox will end up being nothing more than promises of financial reward and larger, better erections. You'll miss real emails from friends, co-workers, that actually matter. Bandwidth will be too busy pleading for your assistance for wealthy but beleaguered Nigerian Princes, that even Larry Flynt will ask the government for help-- and when the porn industry begs help from the Government, you know things are bad. You'll miss a work call that got changed and sent via email, so you'll lose your job.

But why will you lose your job? Surely they could have rung you, let you know that work was changed? Well, unfortunately spam began showing up on cell phones around 2009, to the extent that you stopped answering calls from numbers that were unavailable, or you didn't recognize. What should be a useful little device to keep you in touch with aforementioned friends and co-workers became nothing more than a useful little device for playing Bejewelled and Angry Birds on. When work tries to call you, because it comes from a larger corporation, the number that comes up doesn't show as your boss' number, so you don't answer it.

They can't even mail you, what with all the sale offers and coupon offers that come through the mailbox every day. While those things are keeping the post office in operation, what's the point when they're only keeping the post office in operation to send more of the things you don't read or want?

Eventually, it's going to get critical. Bloggers won't be able to blog any more because blogging is pretty narcissistic. And it's pretty hard to be narcissistic when you have to wade through hundreds of spam comments, again promising money and. . .other stuff. People will stop posting on YouTube because the spam, crappy comments will take up too much space on their servers. Facebook will crash, what with farmville and spartacus and pirate games clogging the service. Once Facebook's gone, we won't have any way of communicating, and the end will rapidly approach.

It might be another ten years off, or it might be six months from now, but spam will be the end of us all.

Mostly, I'd just like people to stop calling me with an 'unavailable' number popping up. And it would be nice if the spam blog comments would go, too.

Preparation

I've been doing this all wrong. I keep thinking about the things I'm doing, and how they're a means to an end, a path to take to go where I want to go, but that's not the case. I used to know that, but somewhere along the way I forgot.

Working on ships, it used to piss me off no end when people sad 'what happens on ships stays on ships,' and claim that it wasn't real life out there. I always refused to take that point of view, because if you're spending nine bloody months out there, that's a good chunk of life that I'm not ready to write off. Admittedly, a lot of the shit you can get up to seems surreal, like you're living someone else's life. You can cram a lot of experiences into a short time on a ship, and looking back it sometimes doesn't seem real, but you can't qualify a part of life as not real. I used to know that.

Well, I'm getting back onto that train of thought. The past couple of years, I've been talking about becoming a writer. I've talked about leaving Las Vegas. I've talked about living on a sailboat. I've talked about travelling more. And the whole time, it's as though I've been waiting for something. I've been preparing for when I'm a writer. I've been getting ready for when I live on a sailboat. And I need to stop doing that.

I'll leave Vegas one day. I'll do all the things I talk about, because, hell, I'll never live it down if I don't. I expect each and every one of you to give me a full serving of shit if I fall short in anything I intend to do. But I've been bumming around thinking that what I'm doing right now is preparation, and doesn't really count. I got a cheap sailboat, not because I like the boat, but because I'm getting ready, learning all I can, for the day I can finally move aboard a bigger one, and cast off. I'm preparing for the future by doing this now. But when you keep doing that, you forget that now is part of your life too. None of us get enough time to live, and if you spend too much time looking ahead, you miss chunks. So the boat, the writing and editing I'm doing that is preparing me to be an author, sure, it's all preparation. But I'm enjoying it. I'm already doing things that a lot of people never do. And while I'm doing them with the express intention of moving on to bigger and better things, I'm going to try not to lose sight of the fact that I'm a third of the way through the final edit of my first novel, which already makes me a writer. I'm spending weekends out at the marina, working on the 23' Ranger sailboat that's mine, which already makes me a sailor. The preparation for what I want to become, what I want to do, has already got me there. And I almost didn't notice.

Impulsive.

I make some decisions easily. Some I find impossible. If we're talking about which restaurant to eat at, or which movie I want to see on Netflix tonight, you may as well settle down and raise a family in the time it's going to take me to choose. But if it's something big, something that requires a lot of thought, planning, and has potentially life-changing decisions, then I'll give you an answer in about five minutes flat.

Remember back in the summer when I started talking about new life plans? The plans involve living on a sailboat and literally travelling where the wind takes me, casting off and saying goodbye to the world of daily commutes, HOA payments, and all those things we're supposed to do. The means to do this would be my writing, as I'd be able to do that anywhere and I fully intend to make a living doing it. Well, I've already taken a few steps to that end; I've written a shit-tonne, and not just since I came up with this particular plan. Book two is 80% done, book one is being edited as soon as I'm done with this entry, and I'm still chipping away at those bloody screenplays.

Now, I've taken another step. It's the first step in the second part of the plan. I bought a 23' Ranger sailboat on Wednesday. It's docked out at Lake Mead, so I've got about two years of sailing before there's no water left (who builds a city in the desert? I mean honestly?). She needs a little work, but it's work that I need to learn to do on a boat for when I eventually sell all my furniture and move aboard. . .that won't be this one, she's a little too small. But for the next year or so, I'll be learning by doing. The more I write, the more I enjoy reading what I've written; hopefully, the more I sail, the less likely I am to sink. . .

NOT resosoddinglutions

New Year's Resolutions are bullshit. They really are. If you want to make a change in yourself, why do you have to wait for a specific date or time? I've been working for years, with a small amount of success, to become less hypocritical, and I'm nearly there.

Having said that, here's my list of things I want to do/change, at some time in the near future. It just so happens that it's right around New Year's, but that's not my fault.

1. No more smoking. I've never been a habitual smoker, but I'm done even having the occasional cigarette when I'm drinking in a bar. 2. Number 1. Doesn't apply to hookah. 3. Count to fifteen before I say anything. Counting to ten just doesn't give me long enough. 4. Be quieter about my opinions when talking to people. Only an hour ago I went off on someone who wants to buy a gun for home protection. Must. Not. Call. People. Stupid. 5. Blog more regularly. Which will hopefully help with Number 4., because if I'm getting it out here, then I don't feel the need to say it to someone's face. 6. Write more generally. Last year was pretty productive, but having slacked the last six weeks of the year, there's a little bit of guilt there. 7. Drink less. 8. Swim more. 9. Hang my laundry up straight away. 10. Stop telling the puppy I'm going to make him into gloves one of these days. 11. Be nicer to the people I already like (I stole this one, but see it as something I can actually accomplish). 12. Sail. 13. Swear less in speech and writing. Already buggered that one up tho, haven't I. . .

There it is. My list of (These aren't fucking resolutions, thereby enabling me to stick by me other non-resolution to be less of a hypocrite) things to accomplish. See if I manage any of them in the next three weeks.

Why three weeks? Because while I may not feel the need to attempt self-betterment on a time scale, try telling that to my soon-to-be 31 year-old body. . .

remiss in my duties

It's been almost a month since I posted anything here. And I feel a bit guilty about that. So much has gone on since the last time I posted, there's something in me that is kicking my own arse for not keeping people informed in what's going on in my life. Which is all too egotistical for my liking, because it makes me sound way too much like a bunch of studies that have been done recently about how egotistical people are these days.

Here's a quick run-down.

Did a film shoot at work that involved my being mildly less-than-complimentary to James Cameron. Yeah, that James Cameron. Lost motivation to write. Drank a shit-tonne. Bought a lovesac. Started dating someone. Went into default. Decided not to go for a job in Los Angeles. Picked out the boat I want to live on. Started playing world of warcraft again. Got to 85. Took a screenwriting seminar. Tour of warner bros. studios. Made pasties. Made pasties twice, actually. Acquired and decorated a christmas tree.

So there you go. I'll be back soon.

Here's a promise. I'll post a short story christmas day, because it's been too long and I need validation.

And maybe you might enjoy the story too. Payment for my slacking. . .

Pressing on

I finished the first draft of my first novel almost a year ago. The day before Christmas, to be exact. It wasn't perfect, and due to the nature of the subject, there were things I already knew I had to change-- either the chronology of events, or a little bit of research into the science behind what I was describing. I messed around with it in January and February, and in April I emailed to to someone who had offered to edit it, give me feedback, suggestions, anything that would make it a better novel. She said she'd get it back to me asap, probably a month, no more than two. I received an email from her a couple of days ago.

Criticism is never easy to take. There's a sinking feeling, when you find that all that hard work isn't enough. You beat yourself up, wondering why her opinion is so different to the people who have read it out of an interest in what you're doing-- friends and family who may have a biased opinion because, after all, it's you who's writing it-- and you think that maybe it's the impartiality they bring to it that unmasks your words for what they really are. I was a little angry when I got her email, because as I read on I found out she hadn't even read past the fourth chapter. Seven months to not even get past the fourth chapter? Is it really that bad? Tell me that, at least, tell me that after the second time you 'couldn't get past the fourth chapter.' Then I can go back, rework it, make the changes to the first chapter that you say it needs.

Or not, as the case may be. I don't want to write some cookie-cutter novel, with the plot generic, the characters typical, where you know exactly how they're going to react in every situation. I don't want you to have an instant, immediate relationship with them. That's not what happens in the real world. Relationships develop, they aren't usually thrust on you.

Maybe this is me just being unable to take criticism. Or maybe this is me remembering a lesson I thought I'd already learnt. My senior year of College, I designed a set for Lysistrata, the classical Greek comedy by Aristophanes. The show was very surreal, and I used Dali and Henry Moore as influences for most of the set. At the beginning of the play, the director wanted Lysistrata seated, surrounded with four ages of womanhood, while scenes of war were projected onto a screen. Our theatre didn't have a projection screen, so instead I painted the head from Dali's Sleep, 20' by 10', to be projected onto. When we had a bloke come in and give notes on the show, he mentioned that he loved the Dali and the Moore references in the set, but he didn't understand what the big head at the beginning had been. It was then that I realized that people will always have gaps in their knowledge, and won't always necessarily want to admit to them. If he didn't get that reference, at 20' by 10', then had he actually got the rest of them?

I'm trying to remember that again. While there are books that should have you totally interested by the end of the first page, I'd argue that very few of what are considered vital parts of English literary canon do that. Nothing by Jane Austen does that for me (full disclosure: I don't like Jane Austen. Not my type of book, although I've read a few for classes.) Neither did Lord of the Rings, books I loved. So maybe this is just me being unable to take criticism, or maybe it's me realizing another important lesson. Just because someone has edited books that have been published, it doesn't mean that their email will have perfect grammar. Just because someone offers something, you shouldn't take them up on it, especially if they don't generally read the genre you're writing in. That's what I want to take from this. I'm going to press on regardless, write the book I want to write, and not let one instance make me rip it up.

The manuscript's too thick for me to do that.

Timing

I've been spending the last twelve days convincing myself that it's not my fault, it's just bad timing. Again. And once I almost had myself convinced of that, I thought more about it. Maybe it's not bad timing. Maybe it's good timing. Maybe it's pushing me in the direction I need to go, which is away, outta here, once more unto the beach, dear friends. There was a shitty movie made about my life a couple years back. I say shitty, but in the interests of full disclosure I never saw it, because I don't like Dane Cook. Good Luck Chuck, the story of a guy who could shag you, and the next guy you met would be your true love. Except I don't even need to shag 'em, all it takes is a kiss. I'm on seven now.

But this year, with it's terrible timing, has led me to a decision. I'm going to apply for the Los Angeles Show, an as-yet unnamed production that I'm not sure how much I can talk about, what with Cirque's penchant for secrecy and spectacle. The jobs aren't posted yet, nothing's set, but even the decision to apply makes me feel better. I'm going to see about getting out of Vegas, changing my pace and my surroundings. And if it doesn't happen? Well, then it's not the right time.

Is there such a thing as bad timing? You get stuck at a red light, the first car stopped, and that's bad timing. But then in front of you a car hits a patch of oil, swerves out of control, and runs into four other cars, five if you'd have made the light. Your son chooses to slam the car door, but your hand is still in it. Crappy timing, unless you have some sort of disease that is slowly rotting your bones in that hand, and you wouldn't have found out if it weren't for the little bugger (true story, that actually happened to a friend of mine, I forget what the medical problem was tho).

So timing's what you make of it. I'm writing about timing for my hundredth post. Good timing? And while the. . .coincidence? of my timing with these seven women seems pretty shitty from my end, and has caused me more than a bit of self-doubt over the years (I mean, at what point is it you, and not just chance?) I'm working on not letting it get to me. I'm telling myself that rather than running away from this last incident, I'm letting it guide me, propel me towards something new. It's reminding me that Vegas really isn't the sort of city I would choose to live in.

And not to belabour the point, but speaking of timing, some of what I'm writing here will work for my book. One of my characters, Brokes, has to make a decision, and I haven't been sure of how to go about it, and now I think I know.

There are so many things that do work out, which is pretty fucking incredible when you think about it. If the universe has been around for billions of years. . . hell, if you believe in Genesis timing, and think the world's only been around for six thousand or so years, it's pretty incredible anything happens at the right time. I think of an instant as the time it takes to go from now to then. Say a millisecond. There's three point six million of those in an hour. And there's been more than fifty-two and a half million hours if you believe in Genesis. Whatever you believe, that's a metric shit-tonne of instants, so why is anyone surprised when things don't work out? Nothing should ever happen right if you look at the odds. And when you bring space into it too, and the chance of being in the right time and place, I'm surprised we even bother.

But there have been those times. Things do work out. Events conspire, bring two people together for a moment. Even if all that's left is the memory of lips brushing together and a lingering tobacco taste, things worked out, and now things are working out still, convincing me to get off my arse and get out, get better, get on with it.

I'm getting on. I'll get book one back in the next couple of weeks, and then I'll get online and start submitting. The timing's right.

Debates.

Ah, politics. I haven't written about it for quote a while. But this is probably a good week for it, what with some of the things going on in the news, and things going on in my life. Political things, because I'm not ready to write about the other bollocks yet. First, the debate between Sharron Angle and Harry Reid a couple nights ago. Now, I've never pretended to be impartial. I'm not. I think Sharron Angle would be as big a mistake as Sarah Palin. Having said that, the debate was boring. Both of them trotted out the same points I've heard before. I read an article claiming that their debate could decide the election here in Nevada cos its so close. I walked away thinking that nothing was decided. She dodged questions, made the same false claims she's already made in attack ads. But I heard from people I work with that she destroyed him. she had him like a rabbit in headlights. He was flustered and unable to answer. She answered all the questions well. She was a freight train.

I think we must have been watching different debates, cos that wasn't what I saw. And when I said I thought that he have the better answers, it's because I'm biased. well, yes, I am biased. But if I had my way, I'd be able to vote for a real progressive, instead of someone who has done too much to appease an obstructionist minority in the past couple years. Politics should have some element of bipartisanship, but not when you bend over backwards to work with someone, and they continue to trip you. Anyway.

The point is, I can admit that I'm biased. But when I call out someone else, someone who is of a, shall we say, Libertarian streak, and say that they have some sort of bias, they look at me like I just called them a rapist or something. People don't seem to understand that objectivity in politics has become almost as rare as honesty these days. And if I call someone out for bias, then I'm just being a liberal elitist, whereas they're being an objective observer if they do the same to me.

My boss doesn't do this. He has a hell of a time, because most of us that work under him are liberal leaning, pro-Democrat, and he's much more conservative. We give him grief about it all the time, ask him if he wants to go to see Harry Reid give a speech, or if he watched the Daily Show last night, and so on. He takes it all with a grumble. But after the Angle/Reid debate, he actually had the same conclusions that I did. He didn't see it as anyone beating the other person, and he thought they were both rehashing old points. His ability to see the same debate as I did, rather than the debate he wanted based on his political leanings, gives me hope that maybe the divide in this country can be overcome. Hope, but I'm not holding my breath.

The other fun bit of politics was that I got to see Bill Clinton speak last week. If you get a chance, go see him talk. I'd have rather it not been a rally for Reid, because I'd have like to hear him give a real speech rather than something directed at a bunch of hardcore Democrats, but he's a great speaker. That's how politicians should be able to present themselves and their ideas. Whether you like the guy or not, go see him speak. And if you don't like him, why not? Cos he got head? Why do you give a shit. It's got nothing to do with that, and everything to do with the fact you don't like his policies. Attack someone for their policies, debate them based on their policies, and here's a novel idea. . .talk about their actual policies, rather than some made up crap that when you're given a chance to prove your attack in a debate, you can actually prove instead of commenting that you'd love to have the chance to prove it, and then completely failing to do so. Yes, that was a jab at Sharron Angle.

Well, that's politics for now. I'll probably be back to the woe is me bollocks next blog, because October's been a very strange month. I'll be glad to move on from it, to tell the truth. But that's for another time.

The Beach

The past couple of days I spent time on Catalina Island, and in Laguna Beach. Went out there with a friend from work to do some SCUBA diving, and generally relax. Our third dive was on Thursday, and afterwards we sat on the beach in Laguna and waited while our dive master went back in to find one of his integrated weights that had slipped out during the dive. It gave me enough time to get sunburned, and do a little bit of thinking.

The last time I did a similar trip was five years ago. I'd been in Vegas just over a year, and a friend of mine from ships came down for the diving and relaxing. We had a bit of a history. I'd met her on ships, and at the time she wasn't interested because my contract would be up soon. But I left the ship, and we kept in touch by letter (she was on the cruise line's private island, sans internet or phone). We found out we actually did like each other. Quite a bit.

We visited each other a few times, and the relationship she hadn't allowed to happen while we were living and working in the same place did happen, after a fashion, when time and distance allowed. The last time was in California, diving and relaxing in Catalina and Laguna. I drove out with her after work, slept in the car, caught the first ferry and dove all day, then went back to the mainland. Crashed with a friend of hers, then spent the next day wandering around Laguna, doing coupley things. I bought a couple of shirts that she said looked hot on me. I still have them, although time won't allow me to wear one of them any more. I keep it in the hopes that one day someone else will say it looks hot on me. I'm not holding my breath. . .except for when I put that shirt on.

My mind wasn't in the right place at the time. I couldn't give her what she needed or wanted, and I didn't know what I wanted. But a lot has changed in the past five years, both with me and with her. I wouldn't say I exactly know what I want, but I do know what I'm open for now. Back then I'd just bought a condo, and had a five year plan. Now I'm beginning short sale procedures, and I have a different five year plan. Back then she came down to see if things might work between us. Now, she just gave birth to her second child. I actually went to her wedding, and have a terrible feeling that I didn't send her the disc of photos I took.

I posted a few pictures on the social networking site that I will not name, for fear that their privacy policy changes again and any mention of them entitles them to take ownership of any content on said page. But I posted a picture of Avalon Harbour, and she commented on it. So Jealous. I don't take this to mean that she would trade places with me, or she's unhappy in her life-- far from it, she's got two great kids and a bloke who looks after her well. But if she's jealous of my being in Catalina, am I jealous of her having a happy family life?

Juries still out on that one. Had things happened differently, would we have the happy family life and have been in Catalina together this past week? That sort of question's just not worth asking, again cos of crazy. I've lived countless lifetimes in my mind, some with her, some with others I've loved, and some with people I barely know. I've been single for six years, and in that time I've been married a thousand times, had hundreds of children, and been mourned by all those wives and family members. Scary, huh?

But I've been thinking that maybe it's the imagination I'm relying on to help me have a career as an author that's screwing me up in my personal life. If I'm living all those lifetimes in my mind, creating possible and potential scenarios, and thinking too much about what to say or do instead of just letting things happen, I'm stopping myself from actually living. One life lived is better than thousands imagined. So from now on I'm going to stop. The lives I imagine won't be for myself, they'll be for my characters. I won't think about the woulda shoulda couldas. I'll focus on what's going to happen next, and I won't be scared by it any more.

Mappage.

Today, I bought my first Nautical Chart. Actually, I bought it a couple of days ago online, but it arrived today. It's of the Oregon Coast, from Yaquina (oh, those crazy Oregon names) Head to Columbia River. The measurements are in fathoms, degrees, minutes and seconds, and if I hadn't run out of pins I'd have put it up on my bedroom wall tonight.

It's much more fun to look at the chart than read the news online. More bullshit from politicians. The Republicans want to cut the deficit and taxes. The Democrats want to cut taxes for some, but don't want to vote on it because they're already winning. Christine O'Donnell wants people to stop masturbating (from now on, if I say I'm going home to disappoint O'Donnell, you know what I'm saying. Yeah you do.) Don't Ask Don't tell isn't being repealed. Lindsay Lohan's in jail. Blockbuster filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Whereas when I look at the chart, with its underwater pipelines marked, and low tide levels shown, and names of places I know almost scribbled on as an afterthought (after all, they're on land, and who cares about the land?), I can forget about most of the crap that's being dealt to us by the people we elected, and the people we pay to report on the people we elected.

I've been having a really productive month so far. I talked about motivation last post, and again it's pretty much all I want to talk about now. Yes, I'm quite political, and I talk about it, but I'm just not all that fond of writing about it at the moment. I want to write Book II in the trilogy, and find out how Brokes and the rest of them are going to get to where I'm sending them. I want to write the screenplay for Taras, and find out if Jake and Brett are going to be friends at the end of everything I'm putting them through. I've got ideas for short stories, and different genres to dabble in. I don't want to write about the Democrats inability to organize their party, and I don't want to write about the Republicans ability to organize their party around no platform. It just pisses me off, and there's enough going on to piss me off without putting that into my writing as well. Will I write about politics again? Probably, it's too fascinatingly frustrating for me to stay away from, but for now I need to work on things for myself. Gods know that the bloody politicians aren't working on things for me.

So if all the crap is getting you down, do what I've done. Find something you like. Focus on that, instead of the ratings battles, or the career politicians. Keep a picture of it on your desktop, or bedroom wall, or office cubicle partition. I've got my boat, and now I've got a nautical map to imagine plotting a course across.

Just got to learn to read the bloody thing properly. And plot a course. . .

Motivation Pt. III

This month has been productive for me so far. I finished building a set, opened the show, grilled for twenty people, started re-doing my 3000-piece jigsaw puzzle, ran a console twice, and have written almost thirteen thousand words, spread out over three projects. Four, if you include blogging as a project. There's something else, but that's private. And the best thing is, the month's not even half-way. I'm looking at my original goal of twenty thousand words for the month, and thinking I should shoot for thirty thousand. I mean, why not? Why stop when it seems to be coming right now, the characters are just setting themselves up for the situations and conversations they've been having?

I'm not going to knock it. I'm not going to stop and ask why I've all of a sudden got this burst of motivation, because as soon as you wonder if the motivation is going to stick around, it buggers off.

This blog entry is more a reminder to people to not stop. You can take a break, pause by all means, but don't do what I've been doing for years. Don't make any excuses, cos they're all bullshit. You know it, too. There's a quote from Nelson Mandela that I have up on my bedroom wall, and while I make no pretenses that my goals are as noble or lofty as his, it can speak to everyone:

"I have walked that long road to freedom. I have tried not to falter; I have made missteps along the way. But I have discovered the secret that after climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb. I have taken a moment here to rest, to steal a view of the glorious vista that surrounds me, to look back on the distance I have come. But I can rest only for a moment, for with freedom comes responsibilities, and I dare not linger, for my long walk is not yet done."

While my use of the quote is pretty selfish, and I see freedom as freedom for myself than a whole country, it's good to remember that we're all headed somewhere. Maybe Vegas is just a place I've stopped for a while, to catch my breath and enjoy the view, but it sure as hell isn't the place I'm headed to. There's no freedom here for someone like me. And right now the view is my motivation. Looking back, seeing where I've been and how far I've travelled, and looking forward, seeing what's in store, is the best muse a person could ask for. Because you're all there, and I can see the whole world from up here.

Performing

The wonders of technology. I'm sitting outside, watching a tech/dress rehearsal of BNTA's production of 'The Foreigner,' by Larry Shue. On my laptop, using my phone to connect to the internet. There are burros braying in the background, and jackrabbits nibbling the grass behind me. The stars are slowly appearing above us, although with the laptop screen and lights on stage they aren't as visible as they would be. My bottle of Tempranillo is empty. There's a few more things to do to the set, but that's for tomorrow before our dress and invited audience final oh shit panic and scramble rehearsal.

They'll get done, they always do.

It amazes me how things somehow come together. Even after eighteen years of theatre, somehow it always ends up with an audience. My problem is, once the audience is involved, I lose interest. The fun part is over. And by fun, I mean stressful, frantic, frustrating, and tiring. But once the build up is over, I'm done. I don't know what to do with myself. There's something depressing about a theatre full of audience, because it's noisy, there's a tangible sense of expectation in the air, and inevitably some bugger isn't going to be happy. But we put on shows specifically to have an audience. There's no point in putting on a show if you're not planning on having an audience. They pay the bills.

Cos of all that, there's a quote from Shakespeare that's quite troubling to me. 'All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts.'

That's all well and good, unless your point of view is like me. There's no point in playing parts if you don't give a toss about the audience. But I feel like that's what I spend half my time doing just that. Right now I'm playing the part of pseudo-bohemian, off the wall and off the cuff, artistically and morally and sexually and financially challenged artist. I'm working on being a writer. I drink too much, but then I make sure everyone knows I drink too much, because that's what authors do. I don't get enough sleep because. . .fuck, I don't know, but then I make sure everyone knows about it.

Maybe the Shakespeare quote does actually work for me. Although I work in theatre, maybe the only audience I really care about is the world, the ones out there that didn't pay for tickets. I don't give a shit that they're forced to watch the show, or whether they enjoy it or not, but maybe I should think about enjoying the performance more.

It's a bigger high than performing ever was. And my co-stars are fascinating.

September

Already? I don't know why I'm so surprised every year about this time. Summer is almost over-- although we've got another month or two of weather I would have called summer living in England. I'm on the downward slope to my next birthday. I think about all the things I said I was going to do this year, and try to work out if I can get them done in the next four months.

First and foremost, I had hoped to have an agent by this point. I finished draft one back in December last year, which seems like a lifetime ago. I re-drafted it, and gave it to someone who had offered to give me an outside perspective, a rough edit, before polishing it myself and submitting. She had it for a month. That month has now been five, I've given up hope of her coming through, and someone else has it instead.

Not that I've entirely wasted my time. As of tonight I'm thirty-two thousand words into book two. Starting book two before I'm done with book one is a definite help. It's drawing attention to things I left out, or need to mention in book one. When I get book one back I'm going to have to sit down and plot out on my whiteboard the exact timeline, because if even I am having trouble keeping up with the ages of the characters, what's a reader going to think?

My whiteboard. I have a 3' by 4' whiteboard hanging on my bedroom wall next to my bed, and every day it hangs there, silent and accusatory, reminding me of future book/play/screenplay ideas. I've jotted down a couple of almost-remembered dreams just in case. The problem is that I do a lot of my writing in down time at work. I know the music and the show so well by now, that it almost serves as a quiet place that I can shut myself off from the world. But it's not practical to take the whiteboard to work every day.

Anyway, back to the goals for the year. Agent, nope, but book two started? Hells, I'm almost half-way through. I've started work on a bunch of other projects, some literary, some theatrical. I built a set for the show BNTA's opening in less than a week. I came up with a new five year plan. So while I suppose I only had one goal for the year, I haven't achieved it and in the time left I'm not sure whether I can achieve it, there's all these other things that I've managed to do without even having them as goals.

I hate the idea of a bucket list. When I think bucket I think of the galvanized ones my grandfather used to have in his garden. Though there's nothing wrong with them per se, they had a tendency to sit there, year after year, collecting rainwater and mosquito larvae. They never moved. No one cared about the water they had in them, except maybe the mosquitoes. And the list part of that? Making lists is useless for me. If I write out a shopping list, I'll inevitably leave it at home and forget half the crap on it. And if I remember the list, how do I add to it in the store when I don't have a pen? A list is too finite. I've just got things I'm going to do at some point.

Like get an agent, as soon as book one's in the state it needs to be.

obsession

I have a healthy tendency to obsess about things. I say it's healthy, because it's how I've manages to get where I am today. I obsessed about working on cruise ships while I was in University, and two months after graduation I signed on for my first contract. I then obsessed about working for Cirque Du Soleil, and two years later I moved to Las Vegas and started working at New York New York. I've become obsessed with being a writer, earning a living doing it, and I'm chipping away at that too with novels and screenplays and short stories underway. And now I have a new obsession. It's been about a week now, and it probably has a little to do with watching the DVD of my 24th birthday last week, and some of what's going on financially in my world right now (that's a whole 'nother blog). But basically, I've become fixated on living on a boat. My own yacht. Nothing too guady or ostentatious, but no floating bathtub either.

It just sounds ideal for where I am in my life right now, or rather in a couple of years once I have a writing income. I know that's assuming a lot, but if I don't aim for it then I won't get there. But living in Vegas for over six years, I feel a little trapped. I'm trapped by the mountains that ring us on all sides, and the dirty ceiling of smog. There's still too much for me to go and see and do in the world, and living a 5 work-days-a-week isn't cutting it for me. I want to sail through the islands of Puget Sound and catch my salmon for to grill. I want to sail back through the Panama Canal, and actually set foot in South America rather than be yards away and still not there. I want to go to Galapagos and dive with the schooling scalloped hammerheads. And I want to do it all on my terms, in my time.

And it's the perfect time for me. I'm young enough that it still seems like a great idea. I'm also young enough to be able to forgo some of the things we take for granted in our daily lives, rough it a bit. I'm single, with emotional attachments that would for sure be tested with prolonged absences, but that's been the story of my life so far and those friendships I still have are all the better for it. I'm old enough that I won't just jump into it without doing the proper research and preparation. I'm old enough to know that it's not as glamorous as most people might think. And I'm old enough that I've done a lot of things that were goals as I was growing up, so I'm in search of new goals.

My opaternal grandfather was a fisherman, and my matyernal great-grandfather was a fisherman. Or maybe great-great, I'm not a hundred percent on that. My father was in the British Merchant Navy after school, and that's partly why I worked on cruise ships, to fulfill some sort of perceived familial obligation. But it's more than that, I realize now. There's something terrifying and fascinating between me and the Ocean. It scares the crap out of me, with its changeable moods and bewitching peace. It's a healthy obsession to have because it's seventy percent of the planet's surface. And wherever you go on it, you're linked to everywhere else.

So I shall live on a boat. I'm giving myself five years to achieve this goal, and I'll definitely be talking about it again as I head towards it. Five years. I'm obsessed.

I've already got a name picked out.

Memory. . .

. . .all alone in the moonlight, I can smile at the old days. . .nah, screw Cats. I was going through the stack of disks that I have in my office. Some are labelled, most are not. There are CD's and DVD's, not all of them play, and it has become my life's work to work out what is on all of them. Half way through one of the piles, I found one labelled 'Amazing Grace, January 2004.'

I don't remember if I've talked about my 24th birthday before on here, so forgive me if I bore you with the details. I was still working on cruise ships at the time, and it was towards the end of my contract on the MS Zuiderdam. That's right, the contract I got put on the corporate blacklist for Holland America Cruise Lines after. Anyway. A group of us, the people I hung out with most during that contract, decided that for my birthday we should rent a sail boat. So as soon as we could, eleven of us got off the ship with a bunch of coolers, and headed to the rental place. Our boat was a 42-foot Catalina 42mkII 3-cabin yacht. Not something you'd take 11 people on for an extended cruise, but for a day it was perfect. Getting away from everyone, disappearing for a few hours where no-one could reach us was perfect. We drank beer and snacked, sunbathed, got naked and splashed about in the water, snorkelled, and stopped caring about the world for a while.

The memories I have from that day are some of my fondest. It's almost definitely my favourite birthday so far, which is funny cos no one does anything special for their twenty-fourth. The disk had a short video of the day on it, so I popped it in my computer to watch. It was exactly how I remember it, with Jurgen narrating over cheesy music he'd added. Alec and TC by the wheel, Katie rapping, Mel sticking out her tongue at the camera. Ben and Audrey, Dom and Jessica.

My memory of the day is better. When I remember the day, I can conjure up how I felt that day, and out myself into the situation better. Watching the video, all I could think of is how many of the people who figured in my favourite birthday have fallen by the wayside. I'm in touch with a few through Facebook, but I'm not close with any of them any more, especially Mel, who I haven't talked to since my twenty-fifth birthday when she randomly called me as though we hadn't been through a completely shitty break-up. I've tried to say hi to Dom and Jessica when I've gone to LA or they've come to Vegas, but there's nothing but silence form them. I couldn't even tell you what became of Ben.

The thing is, none of that matters. Watching the video didn't steal the memory from me, I'm still going to look back on it fondly. I still want to take a vacation one day, three couples on a yacht in the Caribbean for a week. The memories give me dreams, goals, and no matter what happened between us, I'm still grateful to the people who were there for helping build those memories.

It's the same thing with my friends in Portland, Oregon. They aren't the same people I spent a year in Austria with. They aren't the same people who shared stories about their first blowjobs (on a back alley in Florence from a chick called Di 'like the princess' as she told him), or got chased by drunken Frenchmen with (bottle of Jack between the four of us), or walked around one of the most famous sites from antiquity with hangovers with (who knew Delphi had such cheap wine and an awesome dance club? It's in the middle of the mountains!). They've all moved on, and I'm not saying I haven't, but they've all settled down, started families. When I was in Oregon in June I realized it, but they're still with my friends despite the diapers and dribble in their lives. Finding video of friendships I don't really have any more makes me treasure the memory more, because I can't reminisce about the memory with anyone that was there. I can always talk to about head if I wanted to, because we are still friends. Until he reads this, that is. The video and my memory I have of Tortola, where we rented Amazing Grace for the day, will always be how I remember it because there's no one I can talk to who can fill in the gaps I may have developed over time.

So is it the friendship that's important, or the memories? The only answer I have is a cop out. It depends on the friendship, and it depends on the memories. Friends are important at the time to create the memories, but sometimes it's the memories that get you through the droughts.

Stars

I've always been fascinated by the stars. I remember trying to learn some of the constellations when I was younger, and only got as far as the plough (the big dipper to you in the US) and Orion. I can usually find the North Star, and sometimes the Pleiades, but that's about it. IF pressed, I'll give any number of excuses, from I didn't have a telescope while growing up, to I moved to the US and the star patterns are different here, as to why I don't know more constellations. That's actually almost a valid excuse. The North Star, living in Vegas, is much closer to the horizon than it is in England. Everything shifts as you move further north or south.

But somewhere along the way, I stopped paying attention to the stars. I took them for granted. The bastards were always there, hanging in the night sky above me, so I didn't have to think about them much. I lost sight of them. I still appreciated them when I remembered to look up. I spent most of my time looking out, staying at my level. I lived in cities, on cruise ships, where ll the bright lights are within a couple degrees. I didn't have to crane my head back to look at different worlds, I could see them behind the twinkling in the distance when I looked out over the Willamette river, or on a different deck drifting above the inky black ocean, or as part of a cluster in the newest, shiniest, most-advertised hotel Vegas has to offer. Street, room, head, night lights became my stars, and I looked to them.

Well, fuck that. I miss looking up. I'm done looking at a hotel tower, room lights giving a poor impression of a close-up night sky. Having lived in Vegas for six years, I think I've come to know what to expect from the stories behind the lights, and not much of interests me any more. We've become a culture of instant gratification, of misplaced self-importance, and that's what each and and every one of those lights has become. When our VIPs have become people with handles rather than names, with no discernible skills other than making the rest of us worship/hate/envy/mimic/mock them, then what is the point in looking up at a building and wondering what the stories are behind the lights? They're all the same. It's a bunch of people who saw The Hangover, or Swingers, or any one of a thousand movies or shows about Las Vegas, and decided that they could reproduce that when they came here.

I don't want to spend my time looking at lights, and wondering the stories behind them, when I can give a pretty good guess about them. I want to have no chance to guess. I want the people behind the lights to be original, have dreams and aspirations and stories and pasts that I cannot begin to guess at. I'm done with clones, with media-inspired plebes. I want to be able to look at the lights of a city or cruise ship or collection of humanity and find intelligent life, rather than having to turn my gaze skywards and hope that somewhere out there it exists.

Because we're doing a damned good job of killing it down here. We need new role-models, new leaders, and new selves. We need to stop using other people's drama as entertainment, and go out there and let the world entertain us. If you stop to think for a moment, the stars up above have a much better sparkle than the ones we fixate on down here.

Busy

I love being busy. Sure, I'll bitch and moan about how much crap I have to do, but bitching and moaning makes me kinda happy too, so that's all part of the joy of having so much to do you go to bed with your feet sore. Things are happening with the theatre company. BNTA has been asked to produce Super Summer Theatre's September show, and we're doing 'The Foreigner,' by Larry Shue. The show is a perfect fit for us, because it's about two Englishmen in rural Georgia. And while Las Vegas isn't exactly rural Georgia, there's a lot in the show that all three of us can empathize with.

But enough about the show, if you want to know more you're going to have to come see it in September, out at Spring Mountain Ranch. Doing the show is keeping me pretty busy as I'm Technical Director for it, and that means, in a company as small as ours, everything from building the set to stitching sandbags to pretending I know something about sound. And funnily enough, running around like this makes me happy. We've rented a decent warehouse space until the end of August for me to build in and the cast to rehearse, and Wednesday I settled in, with a couple of beers, and went at the set until I had all the walls up. A couple people stopped by and helped, but the best time of the day for me was when I could just crank up the music, drink a beer, and work alone, at my own pace.

And staying busy like this has me happier than I have been in weeks. I was there for twelve hours, 'till 11pm. I had a bunch of stuff I had to do at home, and you know what? I did most of it yesterday morning before going to a meeting with one of our BNTA board members. I finished the rest of it this morning. I slept better the past couple of nights than I have done in weeks, and it's definitely not because I'm more tired than I have been in weeks. Until a few nights ago I was lucky if I got six hours of sleep a night, with all the things I had on my mind. Going to bed at four and waking up at eight was a regular occurrence, but I was managing to waste the extra hours I had awake because I didn't want to do anything in them.

So here's a hint. Don't try to talk me out of whatever's bothering me, cos I can talk quicker and louder in the confines of my own head. Instead, give me something to do. Something I'll enjoy doing, that's going to challenge me and make me have to use my brain. Cos I don't stop using it (even if it seems I'm being completely fucking dense), and that's why I'm a miserable bugger half the time. If you want to cheer me up, give me a project. Hell, buy me lego or a jigsaw puzzle, something to occupy my time. . .although I'm a jigsaw snob and anything under a thousand pieces isn't worth my time.

Oh, and wait until after the 9th August, cos I'm just too busy between now and then.

Advice

I spent two nights this past week giving relationship advice. Each time was to a woman, who if they were single I would be interested in dating. But they're not, so I'm not, and instead try to give advice to the best of my abilities. I'm just not sure why people listen to my advice when it comes to relationships. As I believe I've mentioned before, I've been single now for six years. In that time, whenever I've even come close to a relationship I've managed to convince myself it's not going to work before I've even given it a chance. I know this about myself, and still kill them before they even have a chance.

Regardless of that, I spent Sunday night- well, Sunday night into Monday morning- talking to a woman I'd just met about her current relationship. She's been seeing this guy for a few weeks, and really enjoys the time they spend together, his personality, she thinks he's hot, and the sex is great. And despite all this, despite the fact that when he goes out of town on business and calls her every day, she keeps asking herself why he's with her. She's pretty confident, and although I had only met her that night and we were both a little the worse for beer, she seems pretty sensible and put together, but because he's friends with a couple of playmates she questions why he would be with her.

Now, if he was to keep her away from his other friends, I could see why she'd be suspicious. But she's hung out with them all, they all know here and know he's with her. The logical part of me says it would make no sense for him to introduce her to them if he wanted to cheat on her with them. I mentioned this, and told her to just enjoy being with him because the more she over-analyzes everything, the sooner it'll be over.

The second friend, I'm not going to go into as much detail about, because it's a harder situation to give advice about. It's easier to give advice that someone wants to hear, as in the case of friend one, than advice that might not be welcome, which is what I gave friend two. She basically described the relationship to me, and I told her I have no idea why she would be with him. Beer was drunk and reasons were given, none of which I thought were any good. Admittedly there may have been a lot that she held back, but from what I got he treats her like crap and she shouldn't have to settle with someone like that. That's the advice I tried to convey, but nickel PBR has a wonderful charm and I probably wasn't as eloquent as I fancied.

So why advice from me? I can think of myriad reason to not come to me for advice. . .Been single for six years, I'm sometimes too logical about things, and I tend to drink when dispensing advice, to name a few. But thinking more about it, I'm not sure that it was something about me that had them asking my opinion. I think it's one component of our society, our species even. We ask advice even if we're already convinced of the path we should take. I know I ask people's advice, but don't always listen to the response. It's more about getting it out there, saying it, because that often helps me work through whatever I'm going through on my own. Not just with relationships, either. When I'm writing I like to let a few people read what I'm doing, and technically it's for feedback, but I've made very few changes based on feedback I've received so far. I'll add a few lines here or there to explain a situation better, but that's about it.

So here's my goal. To actually use the advice I'm given. Mostly. Cos it stands to reason that not all advice is good advice, but when someone suggests something to me that I know is the right course of action, I've been thinking about it myself for a while, I'm going to try and do better at heeding it. Starting today. Got some advice last night, and I'm trying to stick to it today. It's been. . .interesting. Not the easiest thing, but we'll see how things work out.

And if they don't, I can always blame the bugger who gave me the advice.

Success.

I'm not there yet. Not by a long shot. But I think I've made a pretty good start on it. The hardest part was deciding what I wanted out of life, but for now I've mostly decided that. It's good, it gives you something to strive for. I've decided I'm going to be a writer. Scratch that, I've decided I am a writer, just not a published one yet.

I know I've listed them off before, but I'm going to do it again because it keeps me focused on it. I'm currently working on four novels (although one hasn't been looked at in months, it's still there waiting to be written). I've got four short stories I consider ready to be published (and I might just throw a couple up here in the meantime, see what you think). I have three short screenplays that could be filmed tomorrow. I'm working on two feature screenplays, with one more I need to start and a fourth I'm thinking about.

Now, none of this is success, because one of the purposes of writing is to be read. I'm not Kafka. I want it all published, even the stuff I don't finish before I die (and just a heads up, I am so going to fuck with people and deliberately leave something bizarre unfinished). I haven't been successful yet by my definition as a writer, but I think I'm on a good track and it'll come.

I've been working in theatre for eighteen years. From being a chorus member and giving a hand at weekly set builds, to programming Automation for a Cirque Du Soleil show, and being the TD for a theatre company I helped found, I've come a long way. That's pretty successful, I think.

But there's one aspect of my life that I feel is a failure right now, and it's bringing down the rest of it. I feel like my personal life is a shambles, that I'm failing at something that used to come so naturally to me, and it's buggering up my focus and my motivation.

I always thought I was a good judge of character. I prided myself on working out who someone was, and what they were like, and whether they were worth my time. Moving around as I did, this was really handy; I didn't have years to develop friendships, bouncing from one place to another. I made a lot of good friends, most of whom I still have today. But it's been living in Vegas, and doing so well in every other aspect of my life, that has made this stand out recently. I still have a few good friends here, but I've always been better at focussing on the negative rather than the positive, and it's the friendships that have fallen by the wayside, that have revealed themselves to be less than I thought they were, that I can't get out of my head. It's the people who declare friendship, but then only remember it when it's convenient, or they need something. And I feel that it's my failure. I don't understand people any more, I don't get how they can be like that. I feel like I'm disconnected from the human race, standing outside looking in, and scratching my head in confusion.

It turns out that the search for alien life has been a success. You need to stop looking off-planet, because I'm here, living amongst you, watching, making mental notes, and trying to understand. Although whether or not it's intelligent life is debatable. . .

Self-Branding.

Ever since I've had access to the internet, I've messed around with it. We first used AOL, when we lived in Louisiana, had dial up, and a mac performa computer. I had a geocities website. Actually, I think I had a couple, but I kept forgetting passwords and/or got bored with what I was doing with them, so instead of deleting and redoing I'd just start another one (it's much the same with my house; when one room is messy, instead of cleaning it I move on to the next room). But I realized at some point that it wasn't good to keep moving around, as far as the internet is concerned. I still have every intention of moving around as far a physical, tangible location is concerned (apartment over the Med, you will be mine). Online is different tho, and I think it was probably going to Austria that helped me see this. I was ready to up and leave my life behind again, disappear to mid-Europe for ten months, and needed a way to keep in touch with people that I could continue to use, hopefully with the people I met abroad once I got back as well.

So that's when I started using my .co.uk email instead of AOL. July(ish) 1998. I've been richeperkin online ever since. I go by Rich, E's my middle name, and Perkin doesn't have an 's' on the end. And for some reason, anyone from Eastern Europe has always called me Richie for some reason, so I guess it works at that level too.

Now it's more than that. If I'd have ever thought I'd spend as much time as I do on the computer, I'd have taken classes. I've have waded in when I had geocities, instead of dabbling. I'd know what all the abbreviations and programming terms mean. And there's still some hope for me, I think, but I'm fully expecting the next time I see my nephew Aiden that he's going to start teaching me html whatever number we'll be on by that point. He's a couple months old right now.

One thing I did do is buy richeperkin.com. I'd become that in my emails, digg, facebook, any online presence I have, and I've never met another one, so I figured why not? I bought it, with the intent of shutting down myspace.com/richeperkin and starting a real blog. But then there was all that code, and learning how to do CSS, so for the past couplea years the domain sat with a nice little holder saying it was waiting for me to move in.

And now, the branding is a step closer to complete. Feeding off a friend's enthusiasm and motivation, I'm finally moved in to my new (online) apartment. The view's not bad, and the neighbours are pretty laid back. Weather's nice too, no need to run the a/c all summer.

I took that analogy too far, didn't I?

But my point is, and I know I've taken way too many words to say this, but creating a persona online is important. Especially when you're someone like me, who as yet isn't really anyone known by the greater populace. But with writing I intend to change that, and I want people to know who I am rather than remain some far-off, aloof figure. I want people, specially with this blog, to be able to hear me saying what they're reading.  I want to create my virtual brand as similar as my real-life brand as possible, maybe leaving behind some of the less select parts.

So I know reading this doesn't seem like much of a change from my other blog posts if you've read those, except for maybe the new theme. But it feels like a big step, to finally have stuff at ground zero for richeperkin. Despite all the bollocks that tries, on a daily basis, to grind me down, depress me, or piss me off, I'm feeling surprisingly upbeat about this. There might even be room here for a couple of short stories, you never know.