10:50 AM - THURS 4.28.16
No Destination

Okay, this is embarrassing...I was writing Jane Z a long-overdue email (Finishing it actually - I'd started a day or two ago), and as happens on a semi-regular basis, I suddenly, accidentally, deleted everything.

(I continue to not understand why this happens so often. But it happens.)

After a moment of "WTF?", followed by a huge wave of anger (Just sitting down to write had been a hard-fought victory, and now, in an instant, it was all gone), I started to see if there was anything I could do to recover my work.

(In this circumstance, I'm a monkey randomly pushing buttons - sometimes, by chance, I get back the work...but mostly not).

And as I put my hand on my mouse (I have a laptop but use a mouse, because I've spent most of my adult life using desktops, and change is hard), I inadvertently right-clicked, and there it was, the answer to my problem:

So I undid.

And continued where I'd left off.

Now I don't want to make this entry all about this rather minor event...but it amazes me that I've been writing online for decades at this point, and it's never struck me, when something accidentally gets deleted, to just right-click and "undo".

So, long story short, I feel like a fucking idiot, but "Yay!" for discovering an easy fix to a vexing problem (Prior to getting this laptop, I didn't have this problem - of things getting accidentally deleted on a semi-regular basis - so I guess "undo" just wasn't in my head as a "solution"?).

Anyway, finished writing Jane Z, and when I finished, was tempted to just copy-and-paste it in here, since the "news" I shared with Jane is pretty much the same "news" I'd want to share with you, Anonymous Reader.

But that didn't seem "right", for a variety of reasons.

So here we are.

One of the difficulties I've had writing lately (I've had three "writing projects" I've been failing to do for a long time now - writing Jane, writing my Mom, and writing in here), is that, in terms of "news", it doesn't feel like there is any.

I posted my last entry quickly, because of the Prince thing, and it didn't really feel like a full-on entry, especially considering I hadn't written anything in almost a month.

That was a rough day - a bad combo platter of first being upset about Prince (More so than I would have imagined, frankly), then being upset about the auditions not happening the way I wanted - I was very not-surprised that I didn't book either one.

The audition thing is really eating at me - I don't know if there's a worse feeling than "I'm getting auditions once in a fucking blue moon...and when I do, I'm fucking them up!".

Though I guess, "My life is meaningless and I'm gonna die alone and be quickly forgotten" is right up there...

(Though I guess those qualify more as "thoughts that create bad feelings" rather than feelings themselves. But anyway...)

Toward the end of March, I checked last year's calendar, to see how my career was going at this point last year.

It was pretty much the same in each instance - The same number of auditions (Though I didn't take note of "commercial" vs "theatrical"), and one commercial booking - so it feels like, thus far, the "new look" is kind of a wash, and hasn't helped me or hurt me much (Though it's met with universal acclaim in my personal life).

In any case, I continue to feel like I've "peaked", way sooner and less impressively than I'd hoped, and now don't know what I have to "look forward to", leaving me fearful of a future where the opportunities keep slowing to an eventual full stop, and I don't so much "retire" - cause I don't want to retire - as get "retired" by the industry (I'm about to turn 55, and at this writing, am still not vested to receive a union pension, because the two union pension plans still haven't merged, years after the merger of SAG-AFTRA).

That's the source of my struggle in general right now - feeling like my life is essentially meaningless, that I've failed to create meaning in my life or make anything meaningful happen. I'm in my 50's, life has passed me by, and I don't really know what happens next, but I fear it ain't gonna be good.

All that said, it's interesting at the same time I'm feeling, essentially, like my life is over, I've grown immensely fearful of death, over life really being over.

I'm tired, I'm bored, I'm lonely, I have no real sense of meaning of purpose in my life, and I am pretty much perpetually afraid.

In recent years, I've come to believe that the biggest way my life has gone wrong is that I have constantly been afraid - Afraid to move, afraid to try, afraid to face myself - which has led me to do nothing rather than just try, risking failure or frustration or whatever disaster I'd imagine for myself.

I think every bad decision I've made, or every decision I've failed to make, has been fear-based.

Hard to blame myself for that - As a baby, I was clearly neglected (getting the lesson early on the world was a frightening, painful place where I was not going to be cared for), then at nine, was taken from the only mother I'd ever known, never to see her again. So it's not shocking that, at my core, I'm a fearful, unhappy person, who doesnt' think he's lovable, and certainly doesn't think he has the power to make good things happen in his life - but the same way I wish my mother had gotten over her shit somehow (Okay Mom, you definitely fucked up...now do what you can to fix things, why dontcha?), I wish I'd figured how to marshal my not-inconsiderable resources (My brains and talent, among other things) to work through it/get past it/do whatever the fuck I needed to do to get what I wanted from life.

But even in all this, there's a problem, a flaw in my thinking that I've always had - I'm unhappy right now because I don't have X,Y, and Z in my life, which I failed to get because I made "decisions based out of fear".

But that suggests a line-of-thinking that "Once I get X - An acting career, true love, what-have-you - then I will be happy".

I don't remember the source, but years ago, I remember reading that children who have traumatic childhoods often imagine grandiose futures for themselves, to cope with their unhappiness - "Things are terrible now, but someday I'll be rich and famous and everyone will love me and I'll be happy".

How was I going to get the idea that "It's the journey, not the destination", when my early life sucked so bad? How could I have survived without saying to myself, "Someday things will be better, and I'll be happy?".

I can't be mad at that child. He used his resources best he was able to stay alive and (relatively) sane.

But I wish somehow, some way, that the adult had used his resources - his talent, his intellect, his creativity, his kind heart - and worked out a better way.

Because, really, there is no "destination". There's no magical place to get to where everything will finally have "worked out".

There's just life.

And death.

And you don't know when death is coming, and how much life you have left, so you'd best make the most of things while you can, cause it's all you've got.

I think that's gonna be a tall enough order in my case, without needing to become a world-famous actor and find true love and all that (It often strikes me that "Everything I want/need in order to be happy? Someone out there already has it...and they're miserable - I can't let go of wanting those things, but clearly, they're not 'the key to happiness'").

And with that, I'm outta here...!

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