Miscellaneous

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By jeremyblachman

I'm a terrible blogger.

I just sent what I'm hoping is a final(ish) draft of an Anonymous Lawyer screenplay to my manager.  Pretty happy with it.  Feeling like it's a really solid piece of material.

Whenever I finish any substantial piece of writing, especially something I care about-- and maybe there's a brain chemical explanation for this, I don't know-- I have a couple of hours of a really nice high, feeling like I can do anything-- and then right after that my mood completely crashes for about half a day, and I feel a total lack of purpose and meaning and can't do anything to shake myself out of it.

Fortunately, I've learned from experience that this feeling is both extremely short-term and entirely predictable, so I'm pretty sure by lunchtime tomorrow I'll be back to normal and have turned my attention back to some other stuff I've been working on.  But, gosh, it's scary to feel utterly powerless over my state of mind, even just for the few hours of it.

I had a post I started to write the other day, but stopped once I realized it was probably beyond obvious to everyone else-- it had crossed my mind, while reading something that should have been much more informative to me than it was-- it's really way too easy these days to become an expert in anything you want to be an expert in.  The barriers just aren't there.  People who want to be into politics and read enough can know just about as much as people actually in that world professionally.  People at home playing with spreadsheets and baseball statistics are probably in lots of cases just as capable as people working for major league teams, home cooks who read and experiment enough are just as well-versed in new techniques and ingredients as professional chefs.  There are screenwriting message boards where people not in the industry have access to the same scripts as agents and managers.  There is as much information out there on the Internet for anyone to read and digest as exists.  The difference between what a professional whatever knows and what an amateur interested at home knows is barely anything, in so many fields.  It feels like that wouldn't have been the case 20 years ago.  This isn't profound, and it's probably obvious-- but it's a little weird to think about.  Or it's not.  I don't know.

I'm watching Friday Night Lights-- I'm a few episodes behind in the current season.  Gosh, even with these new characters that I don't care much about, it's still such an amazing show, such powerful 45 minute chunks of television.  Episodes 5 and 10 are the highlights of the season so far-- I'm up to 11. 

Full post as published by Jeremy Blachman's Brand New Weblog on February 22, 2010 (boomark / email).