9:48 am - Thurs 3/25/04
The Triumphant Return Of Mark And Jane...and other less momentous events

Thurs 3/25/04 (1:26 a.m.)

Well, Mark and Jane are back on American soil.

They're staying overnight at the Radisson by the airport, with their friends the Swensons (They've travelled with the Swensons before--to Peru--and I have a feeling they might just travel with them again at some point).

And while on vacation in New Zealand, they para-sailed.

I was shocked; I just don't imagine Mark and Jane jumping off cliffs (And to hear them tell it, they hadn't imagined themselves jumping off cliffs either). But it was a "tandem" thing--they were basically each strapped in with an experienced "para-sailor"--and I think it's pretty cool that they did it.

I guess they also left various items of clothing in New Zealand, and a maid in Tahiti ended up getting the inadvertent gift of a nice bottle of liquor they'd intended to bring back to the states.

But they're back, they didn't lose anything too critical, and they had a good time, so I'd say, all-in-all, one for the "Win" column.

From the "book journal":

Tues 3/23/04 (11:30 p.m.)

At the bus stop near work (Had to drive today-audition stuff. I'll get to all that later).

A long day (Particularly the bookstore part), but beyond that, not terribly painful or unpleasant.

Unlike yesterday.

(Inserted later from "the other journal")

A Good Day For Cursing

Yesterday I was having a perfectly fine day. I was running some errands--I needed an ink cartridge for my printer, and needed to hit Goodwill for an audition outfit--and I was feeling pretty good about the day ahead.

Then I got in this big yelling match with a black woman in a beemer, over a parking space in front of my building.

It was...unpleasant; I am uncomfortable and afraid of the level of anger I'm capable of, for one thing, and for another, I'm very tired of continually feeling powerless (If I'm honest with myself, there's a very angry child inside me, screaming "I never get anything I want!!". And sometimes--rarely, but sometimes--that "angry child" makes an all-too-public appearance).

I imagine that anger and feelings of powerlessness are pretty interconnected.

Anyway, it got ugly--I didn't throw the "N-bomb", but I was throwing the "B-bomb" all over the place--and I was so angry, it wasn't till some time later that I realized I was pretty much "in the wrong" on this one

(As I was going down my street, towards my apartment, she was turning around in a driveway, to go back that same direction. I didn't know she was turning around to try and get that parking space--She could have been turning around simply because she was lost, and realized she was going the wrong way--but when she stopped behind me and wouldn't pull around, I should have acknowledged what was going on, and moved on. But I didn't. I don't know why, unless it was that she immediately started gesturing angrily at me from her car, and it kind of "got my back up". That, and the fact she was driving a beemer--I have a distinct prejudice against rich people).

After a lot of angry posturing, I eventually conceded the spot, very begrudgingly, parking where I usually park, a block over on 4th St.

I get the sense this woman (I was about to call her a "bitch" again, so apparently, wrong or not, I'm having a hard time letting go of my anger about the situation)is very comfortable with fighting, and probably forgot about the situation a few minutes after the fact, but it dogged me pretty much for the rest of the day.

I thought afterwards that flipping out like I did, you're really left with "nowhere to go". What was I going to do, beat this woman up, take a tire iron to her windshield, that sort of thing? No, I wasn't (Though honestly, I was operating at such a level of fury that I could kind of see the appeal). So to rage and curse like I was doing, rather than demonstrating what a big, bad "Alpha Male" I am, made me feel weak afterwards, made me feel like more of a pussy than if I'd just said "Oops! Sorry about that", and went on my way.

Anyway, it gave me a lot to think about, especially in light of just having read Zen In The Martial Arts; One of the lessons the author imparts in the book is that avoiding a fight is always preferable to fighting. Most things in life really aren't worth fighting about.

I guess that's a lesson I still need to work on...

Later in the afternoon, I had just gotten dressed for my audition (Double breasted, blue pinstriped jacket, white shirt, the most garishly-colored tie I could find at Goodwill), when I got paged by my agent; With less than an hour till my appointment time, he was calling to tell me the audition was postponed till tomorrow afternoon.

I was pissed. Talk about feeling "powerless"--I wanted to yell, "Who's going to fucking reimburse me for the three hours of work I just lost?".

More than that, I was very angry that I'd had to ask for a favor at work for nothing; this was the second time in two days I'd had to do that, and now I was going to have to ask for yet another concession today.

In a word, @#&$%$#!!!!

I was angry, and stressing about the schedule crunch (Two auditions and work), and...well, let's just say much of yesterday was a good day for cursing.

And today, all I really needed to do before work was a single load of laundry, in order to have clean clothes for the first audition, a Nike "spec" (It's a callback, so I have to wear what I wore at the intial audition)...and the fucking laundry room is out-of-comission.

So there you are.

But I'll get to my auditions, and to work, and it's all going to be fine.

Take a deep breath, J.

Relax.

You'll feel better after you book a few gigs....

This is always a nice "window" of time, this "bubble" after the work week ends and before the weekend has really begun.

I'm going to develop the iron-clad habit of making sure I do at least one "fun thing" every weekend. It doesn't have to be big--In fact, with my income, it absolutely can't be "big"--but it's important that I see my weekends as something to look forward to; right now, if there's nothing I want to see playing at the Los Feliz, and if I don't have an audition, odds are I won't leave the apartment all weekend except maybe to grab the mail.

And that's not good.

This connects to thoughts I've been having lately about "getting comfortable with being alone" (Probably for the rest of my life), and "being here now".

Thurs 3/25/04 (9:47 a.m..)

A sign outside L.A. City College says "Learn more to earn more".

And then what, I wonder...?

Ran into "Angry Parking Space Woman" a short time ago (I'm not sure I ever saw her before the incident, and now I can't seem to avoid her).

I find myself wanting to hash over the episode some more, but I'm going to refrain--It was upsetting, I'm not happy it happened, but we're moving on now.

Anyway...

I did get to my two auditions--the first a Nike "spec", the second an "in-house" thing for Nick-at-Nite--and to work, and all the stressing out did nothing but make me crazy for no particular reason.

When am I ever going to actually learn that particular lesson...?

(The Nike thing was a callback, and I think I did well; the Nick-at-Nite thing didn't go as well--Since it's supposed to shoot today, I've gotta assume I didn't get it--but neither gig is something that would be seen by the general public anyway, so I'm not going to be torn up if neither of them happen.)

The laundry room is up-and-running again, so I'm doing a couple loads, in preparation for another audition later today (At Danny Goldman--the casting director I had a little "sit down" with some time back--for some vitamin thing. I'm having a hard time imagining me--20 or 30 pounds overweight, with dark circles under my eyes--being an effective advertisement for vitamins, but who knows? Maybe they want to demonstrate the terrible effects of not taking your vitamins...).

Anyway...I feel like I've gone on for days here, but barely gotten out anything I really wanted to say.

So I think I'm going to stop here--for those of you with shorter attention spans--and continue my thoughts in the next entry, which will directly follow.

See you in a few...

previous - next