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10:12 AM - 3.25.19
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A Shoe-Tying Son-Of-A-Bitch

This is how exciting my life is right now - the big news from here is that I recently bought shoes.

(Two pair, actually. To my chagrin, my work shoes and Zumba shoes started falling apart at the same time, leading me to wonder, briefly, if I'd actually bought them around the same time. Which I still can't recall. But anyway...)

Bought my work shoes at a brick-and-mortar store.

So that being the case, what happened next should never have happened, and I have no one to blame but myself; basically, I looked around for a while, landed on some shoes I found pleasing - a pair of black lace-up Skechers - and since they were the correct size, and I've bought Skechers before, I just took them to the counter and bought them, without trying them on.

Then when I got home, I started putting them on, and realized, to my great surprise, they were actually slip-ons - the "laces" were just ornamental.

Clearly, this is not end-of-the-world stuff, but I was annoyed nevertheless; I'd actively passed up a number of pairs of slip-ons (they've just never been my shoes of choice) on my way to my shoes of choice, and now here I was, with a pair of slip-ons.

The faux-shoelaces threw me (not being a "slip-on" person, I had no idea decorative shoelaces were a thing) and I didn't understand why anyone would buy a pair of slip-ons but want the world to think they were lace-ups.

(My current theory? You buy slip-ons with fake laces when you've lost a step or two - and tying your shoes is now a physical challenge you're just not up for - but you still want to present as a vital, sexy, shoe-tying son-of-a-bitch.)

The Zumba shoes I bought through Amazon (As I've done a number of times before),

And I screwed up on those as well, in a different way; realizing I'd fallen into the rut of buying white New Balance 623s, I decided to "take a walk on the wild side" and buy black New Balance 623s instead (I know - crazy, right?).

But when they were delivered, and I put them on before heading to Zumba, I realized there was a reason I'd fallen into the "rut" of buying white shoes.- They "went" with anything, while the black ones didn't look so hot paired with the blue gym shorts I was wearing.

And this falls under a bit of "wisdom" that's occurred to me, but that I've never shared before - If you do something the same way all the time, you should "shake things up" and do it differently at some point, even if it just reminds you that you started doing it the same way all the time for a reason.

(But you may want to limit that to driving to work, or doing the dishes, rather than buying something you're then going to be living with for a while.)

But that's enough about shoes...

I made a couple of book purchases recently I'm (almost) unequivocally happy with - a new hardcover copy of Dreyer's English and a used paperback copy of Beatles Complete Easy Guitar.

In the moment, I felt some fiscal guilt over each purchase - right now more money is going out than is coming in - but in terms of inspiring me ("to read more" and "to play more guitar" respectively) they've been a big success.

(I also recently bought a book on drawing caricatures. But, sadly, as of this writing, no caricatures have been drawn.)

It's very challenging - I'm always tired and easily distracted and the Internet is the biggest, best distraction/time-suck that's ever been devised by man - but I really want to reclaim the part of myself that actually does things (reads, draws, plays music, writes in here, etc.). So anything that inspires me to be more mentally/creatively active is a "win".

I don't like myself as a guy who spends all his downtime looking at Facebook, watching Netflix, eating too much, and jerking off (That's being overly harsh with myself - I do go to Zumba a couple times a week - but still, I spend the lions-share of my time alone passively entertaining myself), I don't think it's healthy - physically or mentally - I don't think it's good for me as an actor, and it's just not who I want to be.

So "Yay!" for reading books on writing, playing simplified Beatles songs on guitar, and - maybe someday - drawing funny pictures of people.

There isn't much news to report - clearly - but Jane R. is coming back to town in about a week-and-a-half for more Acting Like Nothing Is Wrong shooting.

While we definitely have more than when we started, and we have some stuff I think would be fun/interesting to watch on its own, I'm still not seeing the "You'll laugh, you'll cry, and sometimes you won't know how to feel" emotional rollercoaster of a documentary that's in Jane's head.

I could spend my days writing journal entries about this experience, because it's an experience I've never had before - and will likely never have again - but I don't want to "spoil" the documentary by writing too exhaustively about it.

I also don't want to trot out whatever uncertainties and insecurities I might have about the experience from time to time in here, because, again, that seems "unfair" to whatever the completed film will turn out to be.

The thing I keep coming back to is that this project is not "my story"; it's Jane telling a story about me (That - as she's said more than once - will be about me, but will also have "universal" implications).

So I can't - and ultimately don't want - to tell her what story to tell. That's her business (And I've had a lifetime to tell "my story" and couldn't marshal the wherewithal to do it, so it's only fair to give someone else a crack at it).

Only once, that I recall, have I had a strong feeling that something Jane wanted to do didn't actually reflect my feelings about the matter in question. And when I shared that concern, Jane responded by dropping it.

So I'm not concerned that Jane's going to put onscreen some bullshit version of me that doesn't connect to anything in reality. And I never have been.

But I do think Jane will take the "true stuff" she gets from me and, adding her artistry, tell the story as she sees it, emphasizing what "speaks" to her, what she finds interesting or meaningful, and what she thinks will affect the audience. As she should.

So I will be interested in seeing the completed work myself, to see what my life looks like through the prism of a talented artist/filmmaker like Jane.

It won't be "my story". But you know what? I already know my story, so I'm not sure there would be much to be gained - for me personally - by seeing it play out on the big screen, Much more interesting, I think, to see what someone who was interested enough to spend a lot of time with me, asking a lot of questions, then makes of all that "truth".

And who knows? Maybe in the end, the story Jane tells will make me feel differently about "my story". Maybe, when all's said and done, she'll be able to "see" me better than I can see myself.

(Is there anything else...?)

When I started making a move toward voiceover awhile back - working with a coach and buying the setup for my "studio" - my thought was that it would someday be another "stream of income" to add to theatrical and commercial gigs.

But so far in 2019, it's been pretty much "the only game in town"; while I've had one theatrical audition and one commercial audition each, I've had nine union voiceover auditions this year (And a couple I've done via the non-union Voice123 website - More on that ethical conflict at a later date).

So far, nobody's bought what I'm selling, but at least I'm getting my chances. And as I said on Twitter, those nine voiceover auditions have involved more capital-A "Acting" than I've done in a very long time, which has been nice (And which, in the future, is a sentiment I should mostly keep to myself - I posted that, then almost immediately someone commented about me getting better Alibi scenes, and the suggestion that I'm bitching about what I get to do on Shameless, even when I'm really not, is not the kind of thing I want getting to John Wells).

Well, I could write more - I could get a few paragraphs out of my love/hate relationship with the Dollar Shave Club alone (long story short, I like the service, but their handles s-u-c-k) - but nobody really needs that.

So, til next time...

 

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