Meeting and working with more new people.

After tomorrow's shoot I will have worked with a higher variety of different shoots and crews than I ever have before within the span of a week or so. A ballet shoot, followed a couple days later by a fantasy trailer shoot, followed by a mystery/thriller trailer shoot, followed by a social media spot shoot, followed by a Boeing webcast shoot. What an exciting mess?! Now, I am needing a pillow under my head more than a lengthier, more comprehensive journal entry.

Sleep, my long lost friend.

I have rarely had a time in life where sleep was not easily achievable. I say rarely because I have had one or two semi-prolonged(up to a couple or so months) episodes of minor insomnia in total and am generally so sleep deprived I can basically take a nap anywhere at just about anytime in just about any position. It's a fun form of adaptability. Now... I am so wiped out that it is more of a fun form of necessity.

Bullies come in any shape and size... and from anywhere.

Including our own self-critical internal monologue(occasional dialogue?) It is a facet of life that might simply be a product of its own nature. A bully might only exist because non-bully targets also exist. There would be a natural hierarchy of coexistence defined by the scale from submissiveness to dominance. We all fall somewhere in that spectrum and even change somewhat fluidly as the situations, emotional states, environments(social and otherwise) create or deny the space for such to exist within us. I know myself to be very stubborn, even combative about some things, but I am also as easy to push over as an inverted pyramid when I or the people I love are vacant of threat or ominous danger. I feel that I have been pushed into my stubborn mode of operation lately and I hope I am able to navigate through it without incident or malicious intent, despite my protective response thus far. I wonder how long this situation will drag on.

Such a strange turn of events.

It has basically consumed my focus almost completely since this turmoil began. I don't like being manipulated and lied to. Especially when it is so unnecessary. I have nothing but positive desire to improve the situation yet some sort of fear or paranoia has infected someone I trusted and now this person has become erratic, negative, emotional and illogical. I have no desire to control this person(or anyone else for that matter) but I do wish to mitigate the damage this person can cause. I assume I am emotionally compromised due to this person's betrayal as well so I do need to be careful with my method of diffusion. Chaos is never an easy thing to quell.

The pains of separation.

I am definitely not a fan of breaking something I helped to build but there are occasions when it actually does need to happen. It isn't like writing a story where you know it will have a specific end that you are always writing to... it's more like a car you've built that has started going down the road and will, at any moment's notice, break down or fail due to the inevitability of entropy since you can't do anything to repair or maintain it while it is in the act of being driven. Probably a lengthy, somewhat clunky, metaphor but whatever... it gets the point across... I hope. Anyway, I am not a fan of jumping off a moving vehicle when it is still gaining speed. It generally means I will be missing the funnest part(the top speed portion of the journey) but when it needs to be done it needs to be done. I am nothing if not a slave to my ethical compass.

How does one learn to tell a good story?

By practicing telling stories... in hopefully good fashion. And, as with anything, there will be plenty of missteps along the way, ripe to be plucked for their gifts of wisdom and experience. And there are numerous ways to tell stories so there are numerous ways to crash through all this experience. The pain can be boring, seemingly useless, or just plain annoying... but always instructive, really... the white rats don't lie. So... in conclusion? One learns to tell a good story by experiencing a good deal of pain.

Deep thoughts would be more pleasant if they were comedic thoughts as well.

But maybe I generally don't give myself too much of a chance when I sort of rush through it every day. I know I can come up with humorous things on a fairly regular basis but doing it in writing, at the same time, almost every day of the week seems to be a bit of a daunting task. It seems like a great way to flex that muscle, though, and I have certainly felt the motivation to make the attempt on several occasions in the past. Just typing a bunch of variously valuable thoughts every day has its own merit. But doing it with the lubrication of comedic delivery... now that's the stuff of dreams... clown dreams.