pity party pool

Some days it seems like anything is possible.

Today is not one of those days. 

Today is a day where I get one mediocre review on one script and I think, y'know -- that person is absolutely correct. I can't write very well, and the real question is how I ever came to think that I could. I'll get close to something good, yes, but that's all I'll ever get... close. Nothing I write will actually ever matter. No one will ever shoot a feature I've written. I will never make a living at this. I am doooooomed.

On days like this, the fact that I've written seven features feels like less of an accomplishment than an embarrassment. How could I write so many scripts without even one of them being any good?

Oh, so I've had two short films produced and wh-wh-wh-SIX more in pre-production with six different directors, you say? Well, la-dee-freakin-dah! Shorts are easy. They're one or two or three scenes, with barely an arc to them. Anybody can write a short film that works. But it takes a special kind of person to write a feature that does.

And I am not that kind of person. 

Woe is me.

Woe, woe is me.

What a delicious little swimming hole is self-pity. How wonderful to backstroke around in the idea that the most important thing in the world is that other people love the things I write.

Perhaps days like these serve an important psychological and spiritual purpose. Perhaps they remind me to swim down deep into the darkness, pull the plug, and watch the water drain away. Perhaps then I'll see that this pity-party swimming hole is lined with mirrors, and that the only thing they're reflecting back is a thousand slightly-distorted, backwards versions of myself. Perhaps I'll see that I am not my reflection, and learn better how to be a mirror for others, reflecting back to them a little bit of the joy and light of which only they are capable.

Perhaps.

But today, I just don't feel like it.