by the mass, our hearts are in the trim

Things continue apace 'round the old hacienda. The Wife and I found four unclaimed minutes the other night and sat down together to compare and triple-check the schedules and day-planners which both steer and document the sordid slow-motion car wrecks known as our respective lives, and as we worked through the final week of October we both looked up with surprise and alarm.

"We seem to have nothing happening on Friday, October 26."

We blinked at each other, then again checked the schedules.

"That has to be a screw-up. We've must've forgotten something."

As it turns out, it's an actual hole in the schedule, an event so rare and bizarre these days that it hits us like a solar eclipse must have hit the earliest cavemen to look up to the sky with any awareness. This shit just does not happen in our lives: our daily schedule for the next run of months always looks like the flight log for O'Hare Airport.

Last night, for example, I had to get my daughter to her dance class from 4:30-5:30, The Wife woke (she worked the night shift that evening before) showered and met me at the dance class at 5 pm so that I could then get home in time to eat and feed the rest of the crew and then get to my 6 pm Leadership Meeting for Cub Scouts. The Wife brought the daughter home from dance, made sure eldest son was packed and ready to be picked up for Boy Scouts starting at 7 pm, and the The Wife left for work as the neighborhood teen babysitter chick came over to watch TV with my younger ones. I got home at 8:30, checked homework and bathing, got the younger crew in bed as son returned from Scouts, then I helped him with homework and got him into bed, then I dove into the 28 emails which had arrived since I had walked away from the computer that afternoon, plus tried to prep for a conference call from LA coming in at midnight local time. Took the call, scribbled notes, and then researched some producer leads and contacts til 1:30 am when it was time to call it a day.

That's what passes for a "slow Monday" 'round here these days. Most days we have more kid activities running in those evening hours. Example-- tonight I have three overlapping events (two different kids at two different locations for football practice while I am at a Little League board meeting, electing new officers).

Now, some people like to sit on their asses and judge from afar, saying "well, you need to learn to say 'no' sometime." I understand what they mean, but I also understand what I mean when I say fuck that in response. In my mind, laziness is as much a learned (and reinforced habit) as it is anything, and it becomes a lot easier to do the allegedly impossible at precisely the moment you fully and totally commit to just doing it.

By any rational measure, "screenwriting" as a career goal is an almost impossible task. The odds are long, the best opportunities few and often camouflaged, and the encouragement rare and fleeting. At any given moment one could do an objective analysis and legitimately decide that the entire pursuit is pointless and doomed. In fact, the entire situation is so hopeless that only the truly demented have the stomach to endure the trek.

Which is precisely why I launch myself into impossible duties and insane loads of activities. That screwy intensity — that relentless ferocious dedication to doing that glorious thing which everyone else was too damned frightened or lazy even to dream — is the only way I've found to making the impossible come true.

-=-=-=-

Here's to the crazy ones.
The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes.

The ones who see things differently.

They're not fond of rules,
And they have no respect for the status quo.

You can quote them, disagree with them,
glorify or vilify them.

About the only thing you can't do
is ignore them.

Because they change things.

They push the human race forward.

And while some may see them as the crazy ones,
we see genius.

Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world

are the ones who do.

-=-=-=-

Raising a child so that he grows into a good man is, in our modern world, a sadly quixotic endeavor if you remain content only to sit back listening to the naysayers and stick to the smooth well-marked trails. To actually teach those lessons which matter — lessons about honor and respect and duty and courage and dedication and charity and commitment and dignity and hope and love — requires a sustained level of total commitment to purpose which too often is demeaned and dismissed out of hand as "impossible."

Nothing is impossible until you refuse to try.
.
.
.
rah rah B