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8:24 am - Thurs 3/5/20
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Assorted Odds-and-Ends

Watched the anthology series Modern Love recently.

In one of the episodes, Tina Fay and John Slattery play a middle-aged couple having trouble in their marriage.

They're in marriage counseling where, at one point, Tina Fay's character says, of her actor husband, "When he's not working, he's needy, depressed, and insecure".

I don't know if Fay wrote the episode, but whoever did certainly knows actors.

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Got up this morning to the news that Elizabeth Warren has dropped out of the Democratic Primaries, and Donald Trump is telling people it's fine to go to work if they have the Coronavirus.

I found those bits of news a fairly depressing way to start the day.

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Over and over, I've heard the advice that, if you're depressed, you should think of all the things you're grateful for.

One thing, I'm grateful for?

Every time I take a poop, I look into the bowl and think, "I'm glad I don't have to deal with that...!"

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I'm not sure if this is the exact day, but if not, it's very close to the 19th anniversary of my arrival in LA.

I guess that could be an entry all on its own, but I think it's sufficient to say - 1) It's kind of amazing that I'm still here, 2) It hasn't gone quite the way I'd hoped...but by the same token, it hasn't gone the way I feared either (I often think of the binary view I had of my prospects out here - I assumed I would have definitive success or outright failure. I never for a second thought about what has actually happened), and 3) I'm still plugging - In part because it's one of the few things I"ve ever wanted enough to actually fight for it, and in part, because what the fuck else am I gonna do at this point?

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Just took a little break from writing to email my theatrical agent ...

For some time now, I've wanted to communicate with him regarding what the plan might be after Shameless (In my mind, the plan should be, "Get Jim into another long-running series as soon as possible"), but I've been procrastinating.

I think part of my procrastination is that, as an actor, even though my agents are ostensibly working for me, it doesn't really feel that way, at least not at my level - It feels like I need them way more than they need me, which makes it seem like they're my boss.

But I think the bigger issue has been fear - You have to assume that your agent is doing what they can do for you because it's in their interest to do so. And if they really are "doing what they can do for you", and not much is happening...?

What then? (I have some ideas about "what then", but I'll save them for another time.)

But as I recently discussed in therapy, it's better to know the score than not - If there's more to be done, that's good to know, and if the communication back is, essentially, "I'm doing all I can do", I need to know that too.

In any case, I'm glad I did it, because the fact I wasn't doing it was weighing heavily on me.

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The last time I visited The Last Bookstore with Jane (In Downtown LA), I bought an old Nick Carter paperback.

From the time I was in middle-school to early adulthood, I read Nick Carter spy novels. They had action, sex, and the title character was, in my estimation, very cool (There are over 260 books in the series - At one point I remember having dozens of them in an old suitcase under my bed).

Anyway, after initially reading a few pages, I set it aside until just this past week, when I finished it over the course of a day off.

I was happily surprised that it was more readable than I'd imagined - I'd envisioned thinking to myself "I used to read this crap?" - but more to the point, it was great fun to re-connect to that love of reading I used to have; clearly, Nick Carter spy novels are not great literature...but really, "great literature" was never really a big part of my life as a reader, certainly not early on (My reading history includes, in addition to the aforementioned Nick Carter books, movie tie-ins, comic books, and more self-help books than I could fit in my apartment).

But now that I enjoyed that breezy bit of reading nostalgia (And I may revisit Nick Carter in the not-too-distant future), it's time to get back to The Portable Atheist, a collection of writings on Atheism edited by the late Christopher Hitchens (That writing, thus far, has been much heavier sledding than Nick Carter...though I did enjoy the excerpt from The Rubiyat of Omar Khayyam).

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Well, heard back from my agent- He's busy, but would be up for something tomorrow, or week-after-next (I think I'm going to opt for week-after-next, the better to mentally "get my ducks in a row").
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Recently received the package renewing my health insurance for another year.

It was not unexpected, but still a welcome arrival.

I've been feeling quite bad on multiple fronts for a while now (Way more than I let on in here, because I don't want to be "The Old Man Going On About His Various Aches-and-Pains All The Time"), so I think it behooves me to get a physical and make sure this is just me getting older and tired-er, and not cancer-of-the-everything or something like that.

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...and I think I'm done for now - While this is not what I'd intended to do when I sat down to write (I'd actually intended the opposite, to try tackling a single subject that has been on my mind), it's the thing that happened.

Till next time...

 

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