Here's To Being A Dumbass

This quote has been floating around the Facebook pages of my friends for the last few days...

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.” ― Ira Glass

I've been giving it quite a lot of thought. Ever since I got in, I've been joking that it was a mistake that I was admitted to the Film MFA program at Columbia University. I was 21 when I received the acceptance letter (actually, I got an acceptance phone call first) and 22 when I began classes. I was young and consequently a dumbass. Recently, I've been seeing that as a bad thing. I've realized that being so young and cocky, I didn't fully appreciate that I was enrolled in one of the best film programs in the world, didn't take advantage of the incredible resources I had at my fingertips and didn't consult the fantastic faculty nearly as much as I should have. In short, I took it all for granted. Now, I am beginning my fourth year in the program and I feel lost. I just shot a short film that my advisor has compared to a bad first year project. I've been considering the possibility that I might be a failure. Sure, the film isn't THAT bad, but it certainly isn't perfect. Shouldn't I know better by now? Shouldn't I be able to make something great by now?

Me, minutes after I found out I was accepted.

And so while wallowing in self-pity, I came across this quote. And it made me feel better. Not only because it assured me that everyone goes through this period of self-loathing, but also because it made me see that I am incredibly lucky. If I were to apply now at age 25 to this program, I don't think I would get in. I got in precisely because I was a dumbass 21 year old. Well, no. Not because I was a dumbass. I applied to this program on whim. They didn't ask for a reel and I was applying to the Film Studies program anyway so I told myself, Why not? Wouldn't it be cool if I got in? Yes it would be and yes it was. That naïveté, that willingness to dive in head first with nothing to lose is why I got in. I didn't care that this was a difficult program to get into, I didn't care that I didn't have a reel or that I wrote the scripts the application requested mere weeks before they were due. I didn't give a shit. I had nothing else to do at the time but apply to grad school, so why not aim high? I'm not sure I would have had that fearlessness if I had applied to Columbia these days. I probably wouldn't have applied at all.

Ira Glass's quote talks about the struggle we face as we try to bridge the gap between our work and our aspirations. Earlier this week I was telling myself maybe I shouldn't try to create anything too ambitious anymore, unsure as I was of my actual abilities and though those insecurities remain, I think it's time to go back to my 21-year-old self's mentality and simply ask myself, Why not?

Trying to get back into it

So obviously this blogging experiment failed the first time around (and countless times I'm not even bringing up). But once again I'm gonna try to force myself to write at the very least on a weekly basis and hopefully from there find (for lack of a better, less cheesy word) "my voice". I don't want to keep blogging about nothing (i.e. my dating life, which I must admit did take a turn recently), but I think I'm gonna start there and hopefully pick up a theme, an angle, whatever, along the way. I've become shockingly more disciplined about work over the summer (turning 25 will do that to you) and so I'm cautiously optimistic that I will find some time to write. I shouldn't say "force myself" to write. I enjoy writing, I really enjoy voicing my opinions, but why is it so hard to just sit down and get started?

Oh, TV. That's why.

Dating, Part II

And while I'm at it, let me just post my suspicions about something (because I am incapable of trusting anyone's lack of a motive). Why did the boyfriend want to post our relationship status on Facebook after only two weeks? Does that seem weird to anyone else? Like maybe he was trying to prove a point or make someone jealous... It's not that I mind if he has ulterior motives, I just wish I knew about them.

Of course, I'm a girl. We think about things like these. He probably wasn't giving it a second thought.

I really am in default paranoid girlfriend mode.

Dating

I probably shouldn't be writing this on the off chance that my boyfriend (still have trouble using that word) will see it. But, well, I'm trying to write every day (ha) and Jane Espenson has just initiated a writing sprint on Twitter and I always like to take her up on it. And so here we go.

(Could I use the word "and" more?)

I haven't really been dating in the past few years. Well, I don't know. Maybe. Kind of. Not much. It always ends up disastrously and said disasters tend to happen pretty quickly anyway. I just had a disaster last December. Maybe that disaster has something to do with my current mentality. Let me explain. I tend to get very attached very quickly. This happened last fall with a guy we'll call "Tim". (Actually, his name is Tim but it's generic enough that I'm keeping it.) We clicked immediately. We met online (OkCupid is the new black etc. etc.) and had a conversation that lasted for 12 hours or so. Most of it online, but the last 3 hours were on the phone. It was brilliant. You know what I mean. When you first meet someone and you just click instantly and you tell yourself "I've never met anyone who got me so fast..." That's all good and well but at present I am clear headed enough to remember that this has happened to me easily a handful of times. But it always seems so fresh and so new and so improbable at first... Ahhh, young lust. Tim and I had our first real date a few days later and it was predictably great. I didn't mind that he wasn't 5'8" as his online profile indicated (he was as tall as I am and thankfully I had the presence of mind to wear flats, just in case) nor did I mind that his voice was oddly high-pitched (which really should have been a deal breaker: no one likes shrill guys). Nope, I was infatuated because we liked the same movies and same pop culture references and I knew he thought I was pretty and I felt secure because I saw myself as clearly out of his league. It was bliss, really. Four weeks later, he dumped me over GChat ("kind of like firing someone over the internet"). The reasons for this are irrelevant (and really personal) so I won't get into it. All I'll say is I was crushed.

I don't know why this happens, but almost every time I have a one night stand or a really good first date, the guy never wants to leave. I'm not trying to toot my own horn, it is just true. They hang around for the entire next day, only leaving when they have to. Really, this has happened to me at least a half dozen times. Somehow, I'm the one night stand guys want to date. I am also the one night stand guys date and then dump just a few weeks later. This has predictably screwed me up a little bit. Because the men I bed seem to get attached to me so fast, I return the feeling. But here's the million dollar question: Why? With respect to all the guys on my "list", I have to say not all of them are winners. I've recently begun wondering why I let myself get attached to guys who are mediocre at best. When I was younger, I was always the one who dumped her boyfriends. It was probably a power or control thing. I never wanted to be the one who was left. As I've gotten older, I seem to have changed tactics. Nowadays, I let myself get dumped. I hang on as long as I possibly can, somehow always hopeful that things can change for the better. Now this part I haven't really figured out. Am I really that lonely? Do I crave human attention that much? Perhaps. But the good part is I have started asking myself "Why?".

I like my boyfriend. I do. But I'm not sure I'm crazy about him. I feel I've been keeping as distant as I possibly can. I'm not letting myself get attached this time, but the new question is "At what price?" Not EVERY guy I'll date will be mediocre and disappointing, but I am afraid I've started to assume this. At the same time, I still feel like the possessive/paranoid girlfriend many of us tend to become against our will. For instance, I hate how much he talks about all the celebrities he'd have sex with. I hate that I'm out of the country and that he's going out without me. And most of all, I hate myself for feeling that way. It feels like I'm in default girlfriend mode, I'm not sure these are even my real feelings. And will I break up with him if he mentions one more time how hot Olivia Munn is? Will I find any excuse to dump him just so I don't get hurt again? I don't trust myself or my emotions. I'm all over the place. Nothing I've written in this paragraph is justified because the truth is he has yet to disappoint me.

These are my rambling thoughts of the evening. Not sure any of them made sense, but I did remember something important: even though Tim is a complete dick, I will forever be thankful to him for having me ask myself the question "Why do I give a shit?"

This blog isn't about anything.

I'm not going to kid myself that anyone will read this. However, I need a specific place for me to write everyday. I have a million projects I should be working on (short scripts, feature scripts, post-production and more), but I'm not. In this space, I'll simply try to write every day. The posts might be related to my work, they might not. They might just be about how lazy I am. Who knows? All that I hope is that this is a small first step in the right direction.

Wish me luck :)