I smell.

So...most days I think I kind of suck. 

How is it that as a grown man, a mostly rational, semi-educated adult, I can lack focus, determination and ambition when it comes to the really important stuff?

How at one moment I am concerned with big issues like responsibility, integrity, honor, equality, about being held accountable, about saying what I do and doing what I say... and then the next instant I'm concerned only with boobs, 'splosions, cartoons and napping.  I struggle sometimes to find balance.

Is this common or am I simply a child grown older?

After getting divorced I went back to school, did alright, had some medical issues, dropped out with the intent of going back the next semester and then never did.  I was thinking about that a few months back and was schocked to realize that that was eight years ago.  EIGHT.  I was stunned into silence.

Cue the depressing introspection.  Listened to the Cure for a few days, was pretty hard on myself, then started to come out of it.

That's when I decided to make some changes. 

I currently have a plan to become a writer who gets paid for writing.  Specifically, I will write screenplays and sell them.  I have told very few people about this plan mostly out of fear.  I don't want to fail and have people ask me how it's going, when I didn't get it done.  But that's stupid.  I'm going to continue to put my plan into action and at the end of it, I'm going to be proud of what I've done. 

I've written two screenplays and I'm working on my third.  My current goal is that I will have the third done by the end of the year, then I will spend three months each revising/editing/rewriting the three scripts, and then I will figure out how to sell them and profit from my efforts.  That's it.  By October 1st, 2013, I will be the proud owner of three finished and excellent screenplays and I will find out how to make a living from them (and future efforts, of course).

But back to my original point...sometimes it's hard to find the drive and focus to acomplish this goal.  The defeatist me wants to watch movies and play video games and believe that these goals are hard and I deserve a break.  The ambitious me wants to kick ass and eventually see something I've written starring Brad Pitt directed by Joss Whedon and Wes Anderson (in a historic team-up) and adored by Quentin Tarantino as I walk the red carpet at Cannes being lauded by French journalists as an erudite champion of film and how did they ever survive without me?  Zombie Gene Siskel will rise from his stuffy, psuedo-elitist grave and he will openly weep at the depths of emotion I have plumbed with the best writing ever.

So please, faithful reader(s?) please bust my chops on this stuff.  Call me, text me, email me and ask me how I'm doing.  Demand proof when I say things are gong well.  I'll happily show you the disastrous first draft, then the rewrites, then the polished diamond that will be my as-yet-unnamed third script.  If I say that I'm having troubles, offer support and kindess pretty please.  Unless of course you want to watch me continue my career of customer service to the unwashed, barely literate philistines that have a way of getting into my (admittedly) small comfort bubble and prob'ly want nothing more to see my dreams crushed under the heels of their remarkably unfashionable boots.

On a related note, I have always been a can't-see-the-forest-for-the-trees kinda guy.  So instead of only working on my script every. Single. Day., I will heartily attempt to write this blog much more frequently just so I'm writing a variety of stuff.  Find some balance, I guess.  I don't want to get stuck in a rut, so to speak.  So check back here often, and again, bust my chops if I'm not getting it done.  Only there will be no busting, because I will accomplish these goals.  It's taken my whole life, but I'm finally at a place where I have a clear vision of what I want to be and what I will be.  It's been a winding road full of pitfalls, false starts, crappy ideas, and bad decisions, but I've come out the other side a better person and I'm ready to make this happen.  So there.