Boyhood: A Terrible Non-film With No Point.

Dear Reader,

        Recently I've been catching up on some of the "MY LIST" films of my Netflix account. You know, dear reader, how that stuff gets backed up because it takes little to no effort to click "add to list," but it takes considerably more effort to sit and actually block off 2-3 hours of our lives to invest in a film. Especially when our lives are so busy with work, school, family, etc, or if you're me: complaining about your life, working on creative projects, watching porn, crying in the shower...anyway there are a million-and-a-half reasons that we avoid rummaging through all the media content we "plan to watch." So last night, after feeling accomplished from doing some pretty solid writing, I decided to enrich my life by watching one of the many "critically acclaimed" films I have marked aside.
        I decided to watch the movie Boyhood.
        There are those movies, dear reader, that all your friends tell you to watch because they are "amazing," and "beautiful," and "profound". Ones that all the critics unanimously agree to be a heartfelt accomplishment of the human experience. Boyhood had that reputation, and let me tell you, dear reader, I did NOT agree with the hype.
        Let me first assure you I'm not just trying to be edgy by having a dissenting opinion. I watched this movie because I was excited to see it...after all...I'm a huge movie buff, and, I too had a boyhood.
       But Boyhood is not actually a film. It's a corny time capsule of an adorable kid that I don't give a single sh!t about, because nothing interesting ever happens to him, and he has barely anything interesting to say. In fact, you can almost see him never getting anything out of his life.
        This film has no structure, no plot, very little character development other that the characters literally aging before our eyes... really it took the beginning parts of every boring, forgettable story you've ever told, and filmed them. None of the scenes had any consequences to any of the characters. It left me wondering: Did everyone have such a deep connection with this film because EVERYONE is this boring? Am I this boring? No, no, that can't be it, it simply can't be. People are interesting and battle worn, people have grown up with all sorts of interesting and tragic occurrences. So it wasn't that this didn't capture our "boyhoods," it's that it focused on the pointless, forgettable moments that aren't worth talking about in the first place.  
        This was the movie equivalent to a meaningless piece of modern art that everyone is desperately applauding while they pretentiously give meaning to it, despite the fact that it had no meaning to begin with. Everyone unanimously agrees on its "profundity," but it has nothing profound at all to say. So instead of actually using their brains and criticizing it for what it is, they take it as a chance to masterbate to their own sense of pointlessness.
        The filmmaker doesn't believe in foreshadowing or narrative payoff. For example: There is a scene where Mason, our boyhood boy, and Ethan Hawke, who plays his father, are putting up Obama/Biden campaign signs. I won't get all political, but I voted for him, fine. Whatever. In the scene they are running around in Texas and asking people if they can put the signs on their lawn. There is a random attractive blonde woman that appears and has a moment with the boy and makes eyes with Ethan...if you've ever seen any movie ever, you'd think "Oh, maybe this woman will have some impact on their lives, because she's a character in the story being introduced." Nope. That would make sense. Just like the stereotypical hick that comes outside and tells them to "get off my lawn or i'll shoot ya!" Is he going to impact their life? No, don't be ridiculous.
        This becomes a pattern. We are introduced to a seemingly endless parade of characters that serve no narrative purpose, and a bunch of characters that are recurring, but who experience no growth, and whose plots are unresolved.
        You might be saying to yourself "well that's life." Okay true. But that's not film. There are story telling  formulas and structures that have been uncovered and studied over thousands of years that should be respected-- not out of respect's sake, but out of the idea that they WORK and are logical to human thought. You don't just walk into a chemistry lab and start combining chemicals because it's "creative," that's how you f@cking die. Okay so the stakes of making a terrible film aren't life and death, but understand my point. It's pretentious and lazy. It's like making up your own rules to playing hide and seek as a child, or thinking you're playing the drums by banging on pots and pans. It's experimental, but it's incomplete and illogical.
        "As long as you're expressing yourself sweaty!"
         If you reach a point in pitching a film idea that says, "let's just do it to show a reflection on the pointless and inconsequentially boring parts of life and take over a decade to film it..." Don't make that film. If you make 6 different useless scenes where the main character has a conversation with 6 different useless friends that we've never seen in the film before, and it isn't even necessary to follow along... you've made a bad film. In fact, you could take out any number of scenes from this wretched waste of time, and it would be completely inconsequential to the film. That's bad.
         A lot of the praise has apparently come from the fact that the film "Took twelve years to make." So?
 Something isn't inherently good because it takes a long time to make. It took JRR Tolkien ten years to write the Lord of the Rings. It took Peter Jackson 18 months to interpret the masterpiece and make them into incredible films. Art takes its own time. The length of time you took to cook a meal has no bearings on whether or not it tastes good. I want to kill myself after having sat through this and hearing how "well received" by critics is was. Are they all just offering a sarcastic round of applause for the actors and film-makers so they didn't feel as though they wasted over a decade of their lives that they will never get back? I just wasted three hours of my life that I'll never get back, where's my round of applause?
        "It's up to the audience to interpret a meaning!"
        NO it's just lazy story telling. You can have an ambiguous ending, sure. But this entire story is ambiguous. The end of Birdman leaves you wondering whether or not Micheal Keaton is actually dead, or whether or not "birdman" was just the looming shadow of his expectations and maybe he finally shed his former self and was able to evolve as an artist into something more than just "the birdman". It's ambiguous because it offers the audience a QUESTION, not because there is simply no point to it. Is Leo's character in Inception actually in a dream? If he is in a dream does he even care? Because he could learn to be happy with his family finally together down there...so whether or not he's in a dream makes no difference to whether or not he wants to wake up. So the audience is given something to think about, something to engage with, some question to answer.    
         Boyhood offers no questions. And even the characters that boring old Mason is surrounded with are rendered meaningless because NONE of their plots are resolved. Again, it's just a series of irrelevant moments masquerading as "deep".
        Like the ending scene for example, when Mason skips his orientation to run out to the desert with his new roommate and 2 girls we are supposed to care about because they are cute. This scene is riddled with dialogue straight from the first script you've ever written where you try to give your teenage character, high on drugs, a "profound moment" but you and the audience know that it's not actually profound, it's just a stoned character having trouble articulating the confusion of his own existence. Either way you should be ashamed as a writer because what you are actually doing is taking a stupid, useless moment, that might be used as an establishing shot for a party scene, and turning into the punctuation of your film.  So rather than try to articulate the beautiful phenomenon of this boy's existence on the earth, you hide behind it by presenting how glib and ironic it is when kids get stoned rather than actually explore the feelings they are having.
        WoOOh..life is like...a paradox man! And art is just...whatever you say it is! No. There are objective ways to tell what makes good art. There are objective ways to tell if your writing is terrible. It's a juvenile attempt to have a cute moment to end your crappy film that you wasted over a decade making. It comes off as contrived and completely empty because it comes from a boy we've spent three hours with who has had nothing interesting happen to him, and he's speaking with a character we literally just met 4 frames ago that we know nothing about, other than the fact that she is a human girl.

Here. Read this:

Girl we don't care about: People always talk about seizing the moment, but, like, I kinda think it's the other way around. It's like, the moment that seizes us, you know?

Mason: Yeah, I know. It's like constant...the moments. Like right now.

Cumshot. Credits.

        Ummm...What? Was that supposed to...what in the heavenly f@ck was that? I'll tell you what it was...pointless. It's a nice little "f@ck you" to the audience that purposefully offers no depth, no intrigue, and no point.
        So is that the point? The point is that there is no point? The little moments are precious, is that it? It took you three hours to tell me that? Bravo! Bravo! No. The point is that you had twelve f@cking years to make a decent, compelling script, but you didn't feel like it.
        I'm beside myself with rage. Not every little moment deserves to be shared. It doesn't make it "deep" to jumble together a bunch of pointless scenes that have nothing to do with one another in any sort of sequence, and applaud the characters for realizing how pointless they are. That's called boring, and it's the exact opposite of why we make films and tell stories and share wisdom. I think I'm beating a dead horse here, but I can't stop my hands from typing. Lorrrrdy this Nonfilm was so stupid.
        If we're supposed to believe that "these are just life's little moments from the kid's perspective," I'd like to tell him to wake the f@ck up, because he's responsible for an audience now, and he has learned NOTHING about anyone else's life. How did his dad and his new wife meet? What happened to his two step-siblings that were just randomly in his life for 3 scenes, and are now trapped with an abusive father for all we know? WHO CARES? NOT MASON. That's the lesson I got from this movie. What's he majoring in when he goes to college? WHO CARES. Does he still like photography? Is that his one creative outlet that he has in order to escape his brutally selfish and useless perspective on life? Why didn't he bring his camera to that gorgeous "climax" scene with his new set of friends that the audience isn't made to care about at all? WHO CARES (is there a pattern here?)
        Even this useless blog that nobody reads has a POINT TO IT. But I'm not expecting to be showered with accolades for just "being me." I guess that's the culture we live in now. Good for you scamp! You got taller!
        I don't know, I tried to like it. I did. But the meaninglessness of the film kept creeping in. It might just be brilliant for that very reason. It's convincing it's audience how beautiful and meaningful it is as it wallows in its trite meaninglessness. Genius. I mean, I for one can't get it out of my head, as you can plainly see. Not because it's good, or has any resemblance to story structure or character development...but because it's so painfully bad. I'd think my theory had some validity to it, but so much care and detail clearly went into making this. Like picking out pop songs from the year they were filming, and making sure that none of the characters had any consequence to Mason's life, and giving the cast different "looks"... (hats off to the wardrobe department though.)
        You know what this movie is? This movie is the movie that every 19 year old thought would be a great story to tell. Not because he thought it would be interesting, but because he wanted everyone to notice him, so he wrote a script about all the humdrum bullsh!t that he saw as profound, but everyone else just sees as "things that happen and are normal things."
        Help. I'm losing my mind. Just answer me this, dear reader... have you seen this film? If you haven't, don't bother, if you have...would you sit through that bullsh!t again for a second viewing? No you wouldn't. Because you probably have goals and a purpose, and wouldn't want to sit and listen to a close friend drone on and on about pointless, meandering anecdotes for almost 3 hours, much less WATCH a complete stranger go through all those non-stories. You don't make a film about a tree getting taller, because you have respect for your audience, so why would you make one about a kid?
        "Seinfeld pitched a show about nothing," You might say. Okay. But the "nothingness" is in the everyday situations and conversations in life that actually amount to high jinx and pithy arguments, and best of all, it ties every plot point up into a neat little hilarious bow.
        This has none of that. It simply revels in useless mundanity. With thrilling moments of human boyhood such as:

- bowling with dad. What happened when you bowled with dad? I bowled poorly and never bowled again!
- Playing Halo with a random friend that you'll never meet again! Is it a friend or a sibling? Oh well, it has nothing to do with anything anyway... You remember Halo though, right?
-Getting a haircut from your mean stepdad! But don't worry, because the biggest arch in this story is basically pointing out all of Mason's different haircuts!
- Suddenly alcoholic step-dad decides to throw a glass at Mason...okay here we go, there is going to be some conflict right? Right? The next scene, suddenly alcoholic father is questioning the kids and checking their phones to where mommy is...then she comes to the rescue saying "I'm taking my kids!" then he says "no you aren't" then she says "yes I am!" then he says "Okay fine." So she leaves with Mason and Mason's boring sister whose only character development, again, is the fact that her hair changes.
- Random teacher we have never seen tells Mason that he shouldn't focus on photography because following your dreams is pointless. That teacher is never seen or heard from again.
-Scene where adolescent boys talk about "getting some pussy" in an abandoned...garage...deconstructed house? Sure. Fine. That happens all the time, but why am I watching it? Who are these kids and why do I care? This is the first time any of them have appeared on screen. Then one of them says that he "has some whores coming." because he wants to errr, assert his manlyness? Are they like actual prostitutes? Or does the boy just refer to women as whores? I don't know and I don't think the writer gives a sh!t because this character is only in the film for another 45 seconds. So this scene actually might lead somewhere...maybe the boy will lose his virginity to some girl or prostitute --as I said it's never made clear-- but NOPE! The older kid says "Just kidding! We don't have anyone else coming to this sausage fest." and then the scene ends out of fear that something relatively interesting might happen. I've seen better story structure in porn. And better acting, quite frankly.
- scene where step dad #2 yells at Mason for coming home late. Then nothing happens. So not only do we suffer through one pointless step-dad nonplot in the beginning of the film-- I guess they didn't think the audience had enough of these meandering moments to soak in-- so we watch it AGAIN with a completely different dad!
-Mason talks with his girlfriend of whom we know nothing about but I guess that's unimportant. They are in a car and Mason talks about being addicted to Facebook. Okay, I see your point. Is this going to go somewhere? His girlfriend puts the phone in front of him as he's driving. Okay this might develop...the number one cause of death for kids his age are car accidents...nope. scene ends.
- Girlfriend we know nothing about has sex with a college guy and breaks up with Mason. But we as an audience don't care because she means nothing to us. Which is basically what Ethan Hawke tells his son when he tells him to "forget about her." Done. I already have Ethan, she meant nothing to any of us, including Mason from what I've seen. We aren't going to just pretend to care about this girl of whom we don't know a single thing about other than she is cute. And that's pretty much the dialogue.
- Mason has a boring graduation party filled with a bunch of characters we've never seen before, as well as characters that will never get their plots resolved because Mason doesn't give a sh!t about any of them, so neither can we. His immediate family speaks, and says a bunch of terribly useless stuff about how proud they are of him. Then they ask his sister to speak, and we've been following her useless @ss for almost as long as Mason. Is she going to talk about how lucky she is to have gone through her life with a great brother like him? Is she going to offer some advise from the two years of college she has already experienced? No. She says "good luck" and then giggles. It's like the writer decided that her character would remain the same immature, bratty girl she had been at seven year old some two-and-a-half hours ago. Great.
        Art is meant to augment reality, reach in a pull out the beauty and honest moments that we have as people. It's meant to enrich, offend, offer insight, or tear something down. This isn't art, this is narcissism. If I wanted to remember my terribly boring high school graduation, I can just look back into my Facebook feed and view all the awkward photos that don't matter to anybody, and barely matter to me. That's all this film is: a video slide show of someone I don't care about.
       My favorite scene however, has to be the hilarious scene where we see Patricia Arquette saying goodbye to her kid. This is basically the film's attempt to recap all the torturous nothingness we just sat through. She talks about all of life's little milestones and then breaks down in front of her teenage boy because she's afraid she has no more milestones left in her life. Her son is about to take a huge step in his life, and she can only make it about herself. This scene is the most contrived, ass-backward and out of character moment in the film. She starts crying for whatever reason, I guess she's emotional for having wasted twelve years of her life filming this useless piece of garbage or whatever. And will we get any resolution for this moment? HA!  Will we, f@ck. It just ends. It's just another ejaculation of a terrible moment that doesn't lead to any sort of growth in the film. If I were that character listening to my mother have a piss-fit the moment I'm about to leave to further my education, I'm livid:
        "Why don't you pick up a BOOK you useless woman!" I'd tell her "Aren't you a College Professor? Have you never read Nietzche? What about "Man's search for meaning" by Victor Frankl, the Holocaust survivor who witnessed first hand the murderous indifference of the Nazi soldiers that just 'did what they had to do.' What about Soren Kierkegaard and his 'leap of faith?' How are you in charge of shaping young minds, when you don't understand the basic fundamentals of life's journey? That's terrifying. Have you not dealt with the fact that life is suffering, and the point of life is to have inner growth and overcome adversity? Why are you dumping this on me now, you useless shrew? Get your sh!t together, I'm leaving for college in ten minutes. This is what you want me to leave behind? Wow thanks mom, I'll be sure to feel guilty about leaving you to be alone with your insufferable self. Maybe you should stop sleeping with all these broken men and bringing them into our home."
        I mean I know it's probably blasphemous to say or even offensive to some unenlightened, pretentious turds, but what about THE BIBLE. The Bible that was GIVEN to Mason in some random, go-nowhere scene where the filmmaker was trying to paint this unbelievable cliche of a religious conservative family sitting around a porch, touting Bible verses and shooting guns-- which is ANOTHER unexplained narrative plot point! Ethan Hawke is this clearly staunch democrat, putting up Obama signs and stealing McCain signs off of people's lawns as I mentioned earlier, (See, Boyhood, I referenced something that happened earlier in my work so my audience could make a connection!) and then all of the sudden he's married to a conservative woman with extremely catholic family. What. The. Resounding. F@ck. If you're going to bring in the Bible as a gimmick to say "AwwWw look at these slack-jawed simpletons" at least have some integrity in your narrative and come to the conclusion that the Bible offers endlessly poetic universal truths to billions of people...But i'm sure they didn't want to upset or alienate their secular audience and force them to learn about other cultures. Anyways I digress...but at least (unlike boyhood) there is a point and purpose to my diatribe...point being: Don't have things happen to your characters that you aren't planning to use for a later purpose, especially if there can be a clear payoff and you just decide not to follow through!
        If you're going to have a character randomly and irrationally break down in front of her son about not having any meaning in her life, and 10 minutes ago you had a birthday scene where he's given a Bible...I dunno...maybe offer some kind of narrative resolution to your terrible film? Something? I mean I know it's hokey and overly simplistic, but hey, that's the precedent that you've set for this piece of meaningless post-modern garbage, isn't it?
        The most important question you should ask when creating a piece of art should be WHY? What are you trying to tell your audience with this piece? "People have childhoods," OH thank's for telling me.
        "People have pedestrian things happen to them and narrative has no purpose." Okay. Fine. But at least make the characters interesting! Were you trying to say that people, overall, have terribly boring childhoods? 'Cuz that's what I got from this unrelenting Odyssey of crap.
         But guys, remember... it took twelve years to make!
        Look, I'm all for breaking form and experimenting with film structure. But this is an insult to the audience. It's as shallow as it is time consuming.      
        Ugh. Well dear reader, after sitting through Boyhood I came away with the following: A boy gets taller, Ethan Hawk grows and shaves a mustache subsequently, and an aging actress gets more and more attractive due to the wonders of cosmetic surgery and diet pills...I'm at a loss. 3 hours of the pointless little parts in life all mangled together to create one huge pointless film. It was cinematic blue-balls that lead up to something interesting happening, but the interesting thing never happens...and it just keeps going on and on.

F@ck that movie. I should have just watched Fargo again for the twenty-seventh time. I guess that's the point to this post. If you've sat through that movie, I'm sorry, if you haven't, don't.

Family (American Failures)

Dear reader,

        Good morning. Coming at you today from historic Lenox! It's disgusting out today: rainy and cold and grey. I spell grey with an "e" because it's aesthetically pleasing, in other words 'fly', to me, rather than spelling it with an "a". Both ways are correct, mind you. Anyways, I'm wondering when this never-ending  Berkshire winter is going to take its bow and get the hell off the stage. The cold is seemingly perpetual and I feel trapped more often than not. I felt trapped last night and this morning, not due to the weather, but due to the fact that my uncle needed a place to stay, so my mother, ever gracious, took him in out of the kindness of her heart.
        Unfortunately, he's an obnoxious, foul mouthed, confrontational drinker with nothing but opinions in his head and time on his hands. Normally I find him quite entertaining, even jovial at times, but last night was not one of those times. I came downstairs from some editing and there sat the cliched man with his hair disheveled, dirty feet up on my mother's coffee table, and an empty plastic bottle of whiskey in his lap. He had been kicked out of my grampa's house for mouthing off, or blowing up, or sticking his nose where it didn't belong concerning the fact that my gramps is going through the process of talking to lawyers about my recently deceased gramma's trust. I don't know much about trusts, but I do know that my mother's side of the family consists of a bunch of entitled, codependent teenagers (though they are all in their 50's and upwards) who have spent the better part of their life griping and comparing their worth to which one of them can put a bigger dent in my grandparent's fortune.
        So far, it's difficult to tell from the six of them which one is ahead. One thing is certain, my mother is in last place having been a financially independent mother of three who never asked for a thing in her life. (THAT'S an independent woman, by the way, ladies: someone who doesn't expect anything out of anybody but herself, who stands up for what she believes in and makes her own life choices. She's a total bad@ss.) So my uncle, as I said, was kicked out my grampa's house for being, well, himself. He was in town because my parents (who are not swimming in money, mind you) hired him to put a back-splash in their new kitchen. "Keep the money in the family" I guess is their philosophy, which I understand to a point.
        So, not only have my parents graciously taken in their despondent, cynical son for a temporary (albeit, indefinite) stint while he chips away at the block of clay that is his novel ("oh, he's a writer") ... now they are also forced to harbor my mother's brother for the weekend on top of that. Apparently there are no hotels in town, as my dad and I sardonically observed.
        Needles to say, I gave up writing yesterday after the noise of my uncle's arrival overtook the house. I don't know if you've ever been in a scenario where two dependent losers are forced to share a roof that doesn't belong to them. Normally, if at least one of them is in a pleasant mood, there is little more than passive aggressive jabs, lighthearted digs and conversations soaked in delusion and denial about how "things are looking up."

PSA: I'm in a mood today, dear reader, I'm not normally this cynical or bitter about my living situation, career path etc, and at my young age as I work towards success, it's an entirely acceptable thing, and becoming a societal norm in this region/economy, to make different sacrifices in your life (I.E. living temporarily rent-free) in order to achieve a greater goal. Buuuuut... that's not how I've been feeling lately.

        My mood was sour yesterday. I have been having many sleepless nights lately and haven't been chipping away as much clay from my metaphorical sculpture as I'd like to be. I've been letting fear overtake me and fill my head with too many op-ed articles where  "progressive" well-meaning, authoritarian leftists want to sensor and change and be overly sensitive and pedantic and pseudo-intellectual about people's art Then I follow that by reading too many counter articles riddled with paranoia about how people's right to express themselves and be offensive is at more of a threat than it has ever been, and Marxist pathology is suddenly leaking into the mainstream of college campus's and soon dangerous Utopians are going to round up all the free-thinkers and send them off in boats to Bulgarian work camps and starve them to death.
        Obviously these are complex issues to sort out, and obviously there are bigger issues in the world to concern ourselves with, because most of those other issues are rooted simply in paranoia: but as a selfish, fragile loser with nothing but a creative voice to his name: I have a dog in this fight. Both sides have valid arguments, some more valid than others, and that's what makes this all so frustrating, that's what fills me with such deep angst and tortured anxiety.
        So with this all on my brain, crippling me from writing anything and assaulting my ability to think unfiltered...I then had to deal with an evening of my drunk uncle. What sort of family visit would be complete without me feeling guilty about living under my parent's roof, making me feel professionally inferior because I'm out of work, and making me feel intellectually irrelevant because I decided to "waste my time majoring in theater." Cool. So now, dear reader, you're up to speed.
        My mother's family has never gotten along. This uncle is mad at that uncle, my aunt won't speak to my grampa, gramps won't speak to this uncle, that uncle owes this uncle money, and on and on it will go until my brothers and I are the only ones left to plan all their funerals. The key element here is that my mother is the safe-space for all these desperate, adolescent mental-patients. She, the good willed, fortitudinous peace-keeper will always be there to lend her siblings an ear, a roof over their head, and access to my father's liquor cabinet. Each one of them projects their failings onto the other, or blames my departed grandmother for not loving them enough, or blames my gramps that though he spent the better part of his retirement cutting checks for thousands upon thousands of dollars to support them, he still owes them more. My mother calls it being a good sister, I call it being an enabler. The same way they all enabled my gramma to continue chain- smoking well into her 80's and surprise surprise, it was asphyxiation by lung cancer that ended her life, may she rest.  
         They are all, each one of them, in a collective stage of anger in their grief. I've never seen anything like it. Of course, they've always been petty, bitter little antagonizers, so this almost isn't a surprise...almost. They're all just griping over inheritance, rather than respecting the memory of their mother, and it's terribly sad. I've actually begun to outline a play about it all. A way of dealing with my own grief, I suppose, and I will hopefully not focus entirely on the petty grievances of the American Failures that make up my mother's side of the family. The scariest part is that last night, as my uncle took a break from making me feel badly about myself and started to rave on about my grandfather's (the man who built my family's fortune) "unwise financial decisions",  and how his little brother is draining my grandfather's retirement trust (the black pot and the blacker kettle), I couldn't help create the scenario in my head where I might end up like him. That is another one of my fear's dear reader, and I think we all have someone in our life that we look at and judge and resent for fear that we might end up like them...I have several in my life, however.
        So, rather than analyzing why his second wife has left him (it's the drinking, believe it or not,) or why his daughter from his first marriage hasn't been in contact with the family for ten years, or why he's bleeding through his inheritance to take a trip to Florida on the evening of his mother's funeral to meet with some woman he found online... let's ignore those topics and talk about how everyone else is dragging the family down, let's talk about how Trump is going to lead us into a war with Russia and the Liberal media is spying on us, let's talk about how in a downward economy, I should have gotten my degree in something worthwhile so I can stop living off my parents and contribute. This is just another case where the black pot strikes again, for he's the only man with I know who used his Masters degree in Communications to work as a part-time carpenter and collect money from two separate alimonies. Eat a d*ck, man. Okay I'm officially lashing out.
        And yes, I'm aware that I currently live in a milieu of artists and cultural progressivism, so the idea of unemployment is even more frustrating for me as I wait to hear back from theaters, writing groups and cultural conservation groups and the like...because of all places for a Bachelor of the Arts degree to get me work, this should be the f@cking place, No? These are the types of things that bubble to the surface when too many American failures are under one roof, I guess. I should probably work on finishing a chapter today, dear reader, I've been stuck on it for far too long and I'm at a stage in my writing where I can't move on from a certain part unless I've worked through exactly what I want to say. I'm a perfectionist when it comes to this novel, which leads to dissatisfaction, envy, and a deep, DEEEEP sense of helplessness.
        But hey, this ranting helps. So thank you, dear reader, for spending time inside my brain and getting to know my family. Hope you enjoyed feeling better about your own life as I expose you to the needless drama of mine own. Or maybe you have problems of your own and think I'm being a whiny little b!tch about everything, I wouldn't disagree with you. Though I would defend myself by saying that reading a blog and expecting it to not be filled with ubiquitous whining and complaintive moral superiority is the same inane expectations as when people go to stand-up comedy shows expecting an enlightened, inoffensive, and politically correct discussion.               
        In conclusion dear reader, in regards to drunken visitations by unwanted guests, I guess we have to remember that life is short, and everybody has their own demons, their own perspective, and their own journey to which they are either afraid is almost at an end, anxious that it hasn't yet begun, or desperately bitter that it led them to a place they never wanted to be. And, to offer a glimmer of hope before I sign off: maybe we aren't America's failures... maybe we just haven't succeeded yet. After all, life is not a sprint, life is a long, long, looooooong marathon.    

-CjM

Riffs and Rejections

Dear Reader.

        Happy St. Patty's Day Weekend! I hope you enjoyed the Holiday as I did. I'm feeling a bit hung over actually, which leaves me feeling cloudy-minded and physically weak all at once. I resisted going out and celebrating, but then eventually did just show up to a gathering when it was good for me. Finding the balance between being a recluse and being socially co-dependent is something we all struggle with I think. So i chose to work on editing some things and THEN go out and get hammered. It was as they say, "finding the balance between the order and chaos of life."

        I wrote a lot of fantasy this week because I've been reading some George R.R. Martin and he always inspires me. His writing style is something I envy, and in my own right, I suppose I try to emulate not his writing style, but the place from which he can create, which I believe to be something I like to call the "world building riff." It's a key element in the genre of any escapist fiction, especially in fantasy, and damn if George isn't a master. It's so detailed, thought out, and precise, that you almost forget that he's just pulling everything out of his ass, and that is the mark of a great writer of fiction in my opinion.  A good world-building riff begins with the characters you have in the scene and expands to the setting in which you are in. Whatever dramatic beat you are trying to instill within the character at that time is told through the channel of a conversation in which the two characters are relating their situation to a situation in the past history (that you are entirely making up, mind you). So you are all at once creating a mood and engrossing your reader deeper into an entirely new level of the narrative. This fleshes out the world for both you and the reader. The world-building Riff can be as big as a foreshadow for the entire story, or as immediate as telling how the chapter might end. Either way, dear reader, I have so much fun reading that sort of stuff and writing it too! It also gives more insight to the characters on top of it all-- you are getting a piece of their mind, and hearing about something that they were inspired by or afraid of, or fascinated with, and I find endless joy in the "world building riff " as I have dubbed it. It's the narrative equivalent to the guitar solo. For me it is an inspiring thing when an author completely indulges into their own world in order to paint the tiniest detail.

        This may or may not seem an obvious to you dear reader: "gee delving into details about the fictional world you've created is a good thing...DUH!" Well, it's not obvious to a surprising amount of literary scholars and opinionated critics believe it or not. I can't tell you how many seminars I've listened to that advise you to "trim the fat"and "just focus on the main beats," and as a writer, I have to say that there is nothing more humdrum, cookie-cutter, boring and TERRIFYING than to just hit all the beats to your story arch, then go home.

        Okay so yes, OBVIOUSLY do those things: have a rise and fall of action, create tension, follow the formulas of character arches in order to create a cohesive narrative, but what I'm saying is that you must ALSO not be afraid to dive into your world to give it some unique flavor, some depth of history that will offer some context to your characters, and for your world for that matter. Dive into your world as deeply as you may and find a way for that to (at some point) come back into play for your characters. I guess overall what I'm saying is don't edit yourself down to nothing-- your job is to write and write and write, not to fuss and criticize and doubt. You'll be doing those things eventually when you've constructed the narrative, but while your building the skeleton, try not to stifle the thing that made you want to start the story in the first place: your own unique, creative voice.

        Hey, speaking of Creative Voices, mine has recently been devalued and rejected! Okay well, in a matter of speaking anyway, I'm not purposefully trying to be put-upon and whiny, but I need to work through some of this sh!t, I guess. I received the rejection letter (if you can call two vague sentences that tell you how great you are, but not good enough,) from a local residency this past week so I've been trying to make sense of it and just move on. The residency (again, local) was looking for young, up-and-coming writers/poets/ etc... to come to the region and to bask in the deep historical connections this region has with American Literature. I thought since me being from this area and with NOTHING BUT TIME on my hands as I desperately shape a narrative, I might be a perfect candidate for the residency. With the added bonus of being paid and receiving interest and validation in my work, I sank a great many hours into this application process, put together what I thought to be an incredibly detailed and enticing project description, and waited only to be shut down in the most casual of ways.

        As artists, rejection, doubt and criticism are all just a note in the tune, a step in the dance, par for the course... an inevitability, and if you don't think that someone, somewhere out there is going to think your work sucks you are in for a terribly deluded future, dear reader. There are only two options to be faced with when something like this for example happens: 1.Let it defeat you, or 2. rationalize a way to overcome it. Well, let's assume option 1 is out because we are all passionate little optimists with unshakable spirits who have read the Bhagavad Gita and understood the true nature of their journey is to transcend adversity to eliminate suffering of the self... okay great so we're not going to let the rejection defeat us, so now step 2...how do we not let it?

        Well there are many way, dear reader, to not let rejection get to you...The easiest and most prevalent way that it got to me initially was that I saw it as a rejection of my entire self. It wasn't just the work they didn't want, it was that my entire journey as an artist, as a human vessel wasn't good enough for them to give me the time of day. This can be avoided in one simple way: SEPARATE YOUR WORK FROM YOURSELF. This is difficult for many artists for a variety of understandable reasons. For example: much of my novel-in-progress deals with my childhood experiences and conditioning and my home etc, so it's obviously very close to my heart. So when we as artists are told that "This project isn't for us," or "you aren't what we are looking for," it hurts on a whole different level than not hearing back about that application you filled out in the Starbucks at Barnes and Noble.

        My advise: do your best to see your work-- as closely tied to your very soul, your essence and being as it is-- as just that: work. Know that it's a product that will give certain people whatever it is your art is offering. Not every company is going to be interested in investing in your product for a million different reasons plus one. So what? Refine the product, fix things that need fixing because it's guaranteed that your product isn't perfect, otherwise it wouldn't be art now would it?

        Also, be honest with yourself. Was this the thing that was going to truly save your life and complete you as a human being? I doubt it. More than likely you just either have too much time on your hands, or not enough, and you wanted to throw out some feelers to see who might be interested in your project and it ended up not going the way you planned. So often we put everything we have into something like "a big audition," or "a big date," or "an application to a residency," because we feel lost or misguided or empty. What you need is to FOCUS, and not get bogged down by some superficial event that might validate your existence for a bit and make you feel desired. That sh!t comes an goes in waves, son. So...

        1. Separate your work from yourself.

        2. Don't give so much power and meaning to external occurrences beyond your control (as the Stoics teach us.)

        I'm sure there are 3 or 4 or even 5 good pieces of advise to not getting defeated by the idea of rejection. I guess the most important thing to do is to be honest with yourself about your goals and if your life isn't lining up with them, continue to work towards that goal. It (again) sounds obvious and almost trite... but if you are like me, dear reader, you are so over analyitical that there is no end to the amount of excuses you can come up with to convince yourself to give up. Giving up, letting my potential go to waste, and not sharing my creative gift to the world is like...my personal hell. Once I came to that conclusion, it was so easy for me to get over the rejection. Also, putting it into words for you dear reader gave my thoughts some much needed clarity. SEE, I'M ALREADY OVER HIM, DEBRA, I DON'T NEED HIM IN MY LIFE!

         Really though I hope this rant offered you something dear reader. Know that we all face rejection throughout our lives, and it does make us more humble and more resilient if we can find within ourselves the strength to keep our head clear and focused on what we really want. I wish you strength, dear reader!

        Until next time.
       -CjM

International Women's Day.

Deeeeeeear Reader,

        It was International Women's Day yesterday. Hurray to all the women of the past that stood up to oppressive, male dominated cultures and said f@ck this we're getting a raw deal! Hurray to the women of the present for taking your talents and intellects and dreams and turning them into reality for the rest of society to benefit from. That is, after all, in American culture, what the women of the past wanted: to be able to contribute. Of course, that's what we all want, ultimately. Me being a man, I want the same thing: to provide people with a thing that uses my talents and abilities, and to be recognized for my accomplishments, and to feel loved. Sometimes I feel disenchanted and dis-empowered too. But this aint about me so... Ladies, I hope you felt yesterday (and everyday) a sense of empowerment that allowed you to feel ready to seize the day.

        Of course, if you are someone like Tomi Lahren, you have to make it about you, and have to have a controversial opinion. In many ways, and to many people (women included), her dialogue rings true. She spewed some energized hoopla about not being a victim, and how being born with ovaries doesn't make you special (and considering that over half the humans on this planet do indeed possess them, she has a point,) But, she (and many other far right, cynical republicans, I'm sure) have just missed the point entirely. It is, as I said, a day to recognize and memorialize the women's suffrage movement and remember not to take the women in your life for granted. Sure, some girls will see it as an excuse to throw on warpaint and diddle each other to the idea of burning down the patriarchy, but that sh!t's always going on, isn't it? Side note, with a horny toddler like Trump in the Big House, I can't say I blame their reactionary attitude in many cases. 

        Anyways Tomi, of course you aren't a victim, you obnoxious shrew. You're a gorgeous blonde whose mommy and daddy paid for journalism school and you got famous cussing out liberals on a national platform. But it's quite obvious, Tomi, that you are a polished pundit, an automaton. I can almost see the backroom writers at "The Blaze" touching themselves to you while they type out their screeds of cantankerous, hateful rhetoric in order to stymie any woman who dares try to recall times when women were systematically oppressed.

         I won't even bring up the fact that you are white, because I believe that argument to be superfluous in this setting, and an oversimplification to people's woahs. By that argument, every woman born white is guaranteed the same opportunities, and aught to be as successful as Tomi, which is objectively false, and there has of course, as we know, NEVER been a black female in front of a news camera. No I won't stoop to the level of race-baiting, though I can see why women of color so easily jump to "white people are evil," because of shameless women like Tomi wanting to tell everybody how they need to feel and how they need to deal with mistakes of this nation's dark past. People like Tomi give every excuse in the world to extreme left thought. (cut to: hypothetical meeting where someday, lets say in the year 2435, where a dystopian future has emerged and the left decide to exterminate all whites who do not adhere to the Marxist agenda, and they play a clip of Tomi Lauren as proof to why they all need to be killed. Everyone then unanimously agrees: Yup, f@ck people.)

 UGHHH I can't wait to live in a post-racial-thinking world. Not to deny the fact that different races exist in their own right, but to just not let such a trivail thing become an immediate prejudice. I'll probably do a post tomorrow on some readings and videos I've exposed myself to about writing "uni-racially" in order to encourage writer's diversity and diversity in casting. I think that's a very important issue.

        It is clear to me, Tomi that you are very empowered, and this is a good thing. But did it ever occur to you to use your platform on Women's Day for empathy, compassion, understanding, and encouragement in order to maybe lift the spirits of any woman (or man for that matter) that isn't as fortunate as you? Of course not, I have to remind myself that you, and others like you on both the left and right are just mouthpieces. Oddly enough, I understand that in this culture, many women DO feel empowered by your denying that women were ever oppressed, because they don't see it being a direct affect on their lives. But that doesn't mean it didn't happen and to a certain degree doesn't still happen.   

         Anyway Tomi, to the points on your video: 

1.Yes, there ARE women all over the world outside of the States, and other Westernized Nations that wake up every single day without basic human rights, but what are you doing about it, and how does that change the fact that this nation still faces some deeply ingrained gender issues? 

2.Yes, Madonna is a contemptible noise machine who is now musically irrelevant, so she spouts extreme left ideology for attention. Ignore her. The rest of us classical liberals will try to calm our side, but in turn, you have to calm the f@ck down yourself.

3. No, you don't have to be a third wave feminist to believe that women should be treated with respect in society, and yes, some of these women telling others that they deserve to "have their vaginas revoked" are just as bad as you. They are irrational, and have no power to debate, so they resort to childish labeling. Live and let live, and appreciate diversity of thought as well as other forms of diversity so that you can arm yourself with true knowledge that will enable you to debate, understand, and come to an agreement. (in a stereotypical ditsy voice) F@CKING DUH.  

4. Yes, overcoming challenges and adversity is a lot better than complaining about them, but THAT'S WHAT THE WHOLE DAY IS ABOUT. I've recently awoken to the concept that this political vomitosis is more a battle of applied philosophy than anything else. Can't you understand that as a republican, standing in denial that bad things happened and will continue to happen, doesn't sit well with people? Of COURSE wallowing in self pity and degradation doesn't accomplish jack sh!t, and painting oneself as a perpetual victim is counter productive, but we are attempting to evolve as a society, and in order to properly face grievances, some people express their thoughts differently. And while denying that "bad things once happened" works for you, some people need to get a little angry, or sad or stupid. I don't personally agree with many of the contrived hysterics that the left concocts in order to elicit a reaction, but to tell people to toughen up and deny, deny, deny is both vague and unhelpful to the basic understanding of the human condition.

5. Yes I agree with you on that point Tomi, NOT showing up to work would be a slap in the face to the women who worked so hard in order to afford you the opportunity to have that job in the first place. BUT I understand the point behind it, showing how society would virtually shut down without women. Though it is a bit of a gerrymandered argument. OBVIOUSLY shit wouldn't work if half the population didn't show up to do their job. I'm resisting so hard to point out the obvious, that if all men everywhere decided not to show up to work, one could argue that literal mass chaos would ensue. 

         My final thought, Tomi: pick your battles, @sshole. You are feeding the extreme left ammo and contributing to the never-ending culture of political partisanship. Even if you wanted to use some of those talking points to make a stand, couldn't they at least have been encouraging, inspirational phrases that give people hope, or to be thankful for all the blood, sweat, and tears the women of the (very recent) past have shed in order to afford the women of today, the women of the future an equal opportunity to thrive and produce and provide? Naaaaa f@ck it, let's use this opportunity to quibble about "whiny liberals". How productive.  

      Anyways, dear reader (I'm sorry I wrote this entry addressing Tomi, and not you...I didn't realize I was doing it until now,) I think this is just a part of our nation's growing pains in an effort to bring past grievances to the forefront that republicans have passionately insisted don't need to be addressed. Well, geniuses, clearly they do. It's like when my mother, tired and emotionally threadbare used to come home from work. She'd tidy up the house, get dinner started and by the end of the day, taking care of three hungry, obnoxious boys would break her and she'd be thinking "JEEZ CAN I GET A F@CKING THANK YOU!" and my dad would just stare stoic and vacantly thinking "For what? I've been up since 6am, worked 9 hours at a job I hate and just want to be left the hell alone, Where's my thank you?" And she'd be thinking "Well, I just cooked dinner so we didn't all have to eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches again. You're welcome." 

        Ahhhhhh childhood, good times amirighttt?

        Maybe we, as a nation could use a day that isn't an "official holiday," where we all just bring flowers home to appreciate the women in our life just for the hell of it. Even Tomi Lauren couldn't say no to that, right? Oh. Wait. 

        So in a perfect world, we wouldn’t need a day to memorialize any past grievances, or to appreciate one another-- but this is far from a perfect world, and we are all far from perfect. So, women, mothers. co-workers, strangers with vaginas, even Tomi Lahren ... from the bottom of my heart. Thank you. Anyway, I'm gonna go hug my mom.

Enjoy the day and keep creating, dear reader.

-CjM

Inspired/Uninspired.

Dear Reader,

        Let's cut the pleasantries. I'm uninspired this morning. Maybe it's that I feel anxious. Maybe it's that I've been having a tough time staying off of Facebook, or The Forum as I call it. It really does have a hold on me and that blows. I've realized that I check it now just to feed my sense of moral outrage. From what stupid shit the Trump administration is planning, to what stupid shit the 3rd wave feminists are attempting to guilt me into. As we talked about before, there are unlimited distractions and vices to cling to that prevent you from achieving your goals, and we have to acknowledge them. Forget about your own anxious thoughts and fears and doubts, in today's modern society we have to deal with the thoughts and fears and doubts of the entire world. For me (at least) I've attempted to work through a lot of this angst through my writing. blahhhh f@ck.

        We have to find a permanent way to tap into our inspired self, or at least leave a trail of breadcrumbs so that our uninspired self can get back to the place it needs to be in order to work. But then I think "hey, maybe the uninspired days are all part of the process." They remind us what it's like to feel useless and fraudulent. They show us what it's like to live without our muses. Or is that just enabling laziness? What are your thoughts, dear reader? What inspires you?

        For me, and for many others that I have read, the thing that inspires them the most is (of course) other art and, more importantly, the work that they themselves put in. Often times we grow so attached to the work we do, and find the prospect of getting something wrong to be devastating, so we end up not creating anything at all. This is what we want to avoid. 

        There's also the very real possibility of us being too hard on ourselves, dear reader, don't you think? I know we want immediate success, immediate gratification... I think for me, that's part of the draw for something like Facebook or even the poisonous YouTube comment section-- the response are immediate, reactionary, and altogether harmful for anyone's daily mental health. You know those encounters you have at the grocery store with some idiot who wasn't paying attention or said something abhorrently offensive? They ruin your day, don't they?So we have now created an unfiltered climate of noise that is all at once privately induced yet publicly accessible. Scary. 

        Sorry to drone on with my point, dear reader, but I really do feel quite helpless today. It may be shamefulness and guilt for going on Facebook yesterday even though I was giving it up for lent. So I feel shame for not being able to hold to my integrity for something I swore off, I feel shame a sense of religious shame that comes with the territory of participating in any sort of religious ritual to be honest, and lastly I feel the inevitable shame that one feels after spending any given time on any sort of media platform. It's usually only after about 30 seconds or so that someone will tell you how awful you should feel being born white, being born a man, being born straight, being a slut, being born with all your limbs in tact, being born in America, being born at all... they call it "spreading awareness". I call it mass guilt tripping. 

        I'm reminded of that scene in game of thrones where Cersei Lannister is put through one of the most brutal walks of shame to have be fictionalized in our recent history. Back in ancient times, as far as reality and not Westeros is concerned-- those happened as a regular occurrence. There is a character called Septa Unella, a member of the female clergy in the fictional universe, if you are not familiar. During Cersei's "walk of atonement," the Septa stands behind her shouting "Shame, shame, shame, shame, shame!" --because you know...what Cersei did was far worse than forcibly parading her naked through the streets to prove what a whore she is. She is guilty of being a whore.

        Anyway, the reason I bring this obscure reference into calling, dear reader, is to draw attention to some of the political climate occurring in our country. I was watching a speech by a professor named Jordan Peterson. He has become famous on the internet lately for refusing to use words that he deems to be illogical, fantastical and demeaning to his language, but would allow "non binary" gendered individuals to feel accepted and not, as they put it, "persecuted". So dear reader, whether you believe his stance is commendable or not, what I want to draw attention to is the reaction he got from many of the "oppressed" students on the campus. He, a former Harvard professor and current professor at the University of Toronto in Canada, was making a speech. Many of the students gathering were protesting. They shouted "shame! shame! shame! shame!" over and over and even went as far at to sabotage his microphone rendering his speech ineffective. I'm not clear on the laws in Canada, but in the United States we have the first amendment, which allows for both the right to freedom of expression without persecution, and also the right to protest. This, as an artist, is what I fear the most: to be silenced, to be rendered unable to have a voice for fear of being maligned and labelled an enemy simply by way of difference of opinion. This cry bully mentality, this virtue signaling of the casually offended, the recreationally oppressed... this climate is bleeding into American campuses everywhere and is a threat to the very way of life we have worked so tirelessly as a nation to achieve. I was dumbfounded that anyone, anywhere, in a western society could ever think it constructive, or indeed, progressive to shame a brilliant, well spoken man such as he into silence. It was mind-blowing.

        So yeah, this has left me feeling uninspired, but the day is young! I think I may go for a walk. The puppy is here today, after all. My brother drops his dog Banner off every now and again and I watch him until he comes to pick him up in the afternoon. I love having him around. He likes to hang out and listen to me spout off angry diatribes of "why isn't art happening!?" and he's a good boy who likes to play just enough for me to have to give him attention, but not be too much of a distraction.

        So today, dear reader, let's you and me try to be conscious of what leaves us inspired and uninspired and try to sort out how we can allow the two to exist harmoniously without leaving us crippled with ineffectiveness with our art. 

        Lastly. There are a million and a half excuses to not write...but you only need one excuse to put down your thoughts in writing. So express yourself and find your audience. The truth will set you free.   

Until next time,

CjM

  

Distractions and Goals

Dear Reader,

        March is here, and with it, the cold. I'm not shocked. Also I have become aware that I begin most of these posts by talking about either what day it is or what the weather is like...in this case, both. Am I terribly boring? Is that it? Or maybe I'm just "super f@cking white." Do those things invariably mean the same thing? Anyways, I know I haven't posted in a while, but believe it or not, that's been a good thing. Not that I don't enjoy our time together, dear reader, but as I've told you, this blog was reserved for my ramblings and incoherent babbling in order to stretch my writing muscles in the morning. YOU KNEW WHAT THIS WAS.

        Lately, I've been so damned motivated and inspired that I've gone straight to writing to my primary projects without the need of morning pages, so I guess you could say this outlet is doing good things for me!  I think a lot of my productivity has come out of a conscious shift I have made in my daily routine.  I've made an effort to cut distractions to a minimum so I can focus on the goals I set for myself.

         I was wondering dear reader, what are the distractions in your life that can sometimes get in the way of our creative process?

         I'd like to share something with you. I was raised Catholic. We could go all into the influence Catholicism has had, positives, negatives, on western culture as a whole and drive one another crazy, but basically why I'm telling you this is that Ash Wednesday was yesterday, and though I don't observe the liturgical calender as a rite throughout the year, I still celebrate the major holidays with my family to partake in traditions, which, I believe, is the main foundation to any and all religions anyway. So being aware of the Lenten season, I've decided to partake in lent, and "give something up."

        The thing I'm "sacrificing" is social media; Facebook in particular. I have to say, dear reader, it doesn't really feel like much of a sacrifice. I'm absolutely loving the sense of freedom I'm feeling without Facebook in my life. It made me realize how completely addicted I've become to it. Studies show that social media is just addictive as a hard drug like cocaine. Without trying to excuse my sloth or paint our society as a generation of hopeless victims,we do have a battle to fight. It's the battle of consumption versus consciousness that we are fighting-- the idea that this vast sea of information is relentlessly undulating into our brains at a rate never seen before. I'm susceptible to it certainly, to the point where I sometimes feel so anxious and hopelessly overwhelmed that I don't even know why I'd bother trying to add my thoughts to the zeitgeist. 

        I've done this social media hiatus before. I'll tell you, after you come back you'll realize that you really didn't miss a damn thing. It's a humbling feeling that opens you up to the knowledge that the world keeps turning without you. You'll realize  "Hey...I'm only here for a certain amount of time, so I'd like to spend it maybe going after some fulfillment and accomplishment."   

        So if you reach that point with any sort of vice: smoking, drinking, porn, television, internet...it's time to give that shit a rest. It's not that these things are inherently "bad" or "evil"... they are tools of pleasure and they just need to be used in moderation and not relied upon. Look at it this way. Everything you do during your daily routine is either helping you reach your goal, or not. We could examine or argue things like chores, making meals/eating, putting gas in your car, burning hours at your day job, these are all things that (although take up time) inevitably CAN help you achieve your goal. So try not to make the mistake that I did and resent everything you do that ISN'T writing, that's a dangerous game and it leads to self loathing, and hopeless anxiety. It's what you do with the free time that you DO have that matters. Are you binging episodes of the Office because you are "just so burnt out"? That's perfectly normal. Believe me. Relaxation and comfort is what we as a society strive for, right? But ultimately, doing things like binging Netflix episodes leave you unfulfilled if you aren't balancing them out with doing something creative. Maybe use those mindless things you enjoy as a reward system. "For every hour I spend organizing my thoughts or working on my personal projects, I will reward myself with a half hour episode of my favorite show." Be good to yourself, but don't overindulge.       

        I know it can be difficult, dear reader. But what it really takes is for you to assess your daily actions and say "is this activity bringing me closer to achieving my goals? Whatever those goals may be, that's up to you. And hey, maybe you feel comfortable with the amount of work you put in on a daily basis and feel that you deserve a little recreation and comfort-- in which case, you can ignore pretty much everything I've said because you are better at life than I am at the moment. Goody for you.

       I've found recently that just SETTING conscious goals is a huge step towards achieving them. Write them down, bring your goals to life, then all of the sudden you'll be faced with them head on and have no choice but to get to work. 

       What things, dear reader, are keeping you from achieving your goals? Is your job sucking up all your time and leaving you unfulfilled? Are you spending too much time reloading your Facebook feed to see pictures of your hot friends on their vacation to Bora Bora, stalking your ex, or arguing with "Libtards"/"Bigots". Maybe these things inspire you in small doses, after all they are a part of life and cannot be ignored. But together dear reader, we can keep each other in check and make sure that life's distractions are not getting in the way of our goals.

        Keep fighting the Good fight!

-CjM