Just a whole lotta crazy

It's one of those weeks - actually it's felt like several of those weeks. Where everything just seems to go super fast and super slow at the same time. Where you have a lot to do but never seem to get it all done. You know what I'm talking about, right? Tell me I am not alone in this.

Maybe it's the holidays being over. Maybe it's the lack of the election to spur us on in debate as a nation. Maybe it's this HUGE FREAKING MESS OF AN ECONOMY we seem to have on our hands. And mostly by that I mean the budget cuts here in Los Angeles that have left Angela and I praying for her job. Yes, I know, things are bad everywhere. But they seem a whole lot worse when you pay the rent and wonder if there will be another paycheck to cover next month's. Yes, it's that serious.

Maybe it's being done with my novel and my screenplay and knowing that I now have to tackle what I think is a writer's hardest job of all: rewriting. I know I need to cut the novel down by oh, a third. And I just realized, thanks to my wonderful classmates who have helped me see the light, that my protagonist in my screenplay is completely passive aggressive in the second and third acts and she wasn't that way in the first and she just shouldn't be that way.

Maybe it's that I am trying to change my diet and my stomach always seems to rumble. Or that I know I need to exercise but I also need to do the Mary Kay books and rewrite that novel. Maybe it's that I finally got my class assignments for the University of Phoenix and I'm scared to death that it's going to take over my life and I won't have any time to do my writing.

Maybe it's that the day after Angela and I got back from Michigan my great grandmother passed away and we couldn't afford to go home for the funeral (also, I had school that week). I wanted to be there and couldn't but I feel as emotionally drained as if I was. I spent time with her at Christmas and to me that means more than any funeral ever could but still, it's on my mind. Especially when I go to write my thank you notes and see her name on the list. Or when I am filling out my calendar for the year and come across what should have been her 96th birthday.

Maybe it's that I am excited about this new class I am taking, the business of being a screenwriter, and the possibilities it entails. I am starting to read "the trades" and think commercially, and actually treat it like a business instead of just a craft. That's a mixed bag for me. I am trying to balance researching production companies and agencies with editing and writing and reading scripts.

And I know, we're all busy, we all have things going on. And I'm so thankful, I really am. I love what I am doing, I love being home during the day and writing and getting ready to teach college classes again. I do. I love the volunteering and the friends I am making. I love having to see movies as homework (this week: Frost/Nixon and Slumdog Millionaire). I love being in school. I love learning. I love that my parents are now on Facebook, and my grandma and basically my whole extended family!

So yeah, just a whole lotta crazy going on here. I felt the need to write and I hope it doesn't come across as griping because, in reality, I'm pretty happy. I'm not just doing writing anymore, I am becoming a writer. (This distinction was made clear in my lecture Monday night and I am determined to become not just do!!!) I have people who love me, new friends who feel like old friends, old friends who hold me aloft every single day. And I live in southern California, where it was 90 degrees and sunny today. On January 14th. When the rest of the country is buried under snow and below zero temperatures. So yeah. I'm okay. And if I tell myself that enough times, it will become my truth.