#it happens to me sometimes too though. in my perfect world ray is latino. and many others <3

[goldiipond]

biggest accomplishment for me is my designs infecting peoples brains to the point they see the characters canon appearances n go hey wait

[joshuazev]

On a twiddling of the thumbs:

There was a book I used to read all the time in late elementary and then every once in a while in middle school called, “Holes” by Louis Sachar.  It seemed like every one of his books was assigned reading at B.F. Day Elementary School, including “Sideways Stories from Wayside School,” which I revisited in the past couple of years and in the process was reminded of why I love those books and Sachar’s writing so much.  I remember a lot about B.F. Day and our librarian, a Mariner fanatic, Mr. Gil, was the perfect librarian for us all.  Not everyone liked him.  He had a tendency to be very strict, but if you got along with him, which I did because of my own Mariner and sports fandom craze, he was always on your side.  He was the first person to speak Spanish to me.  During our class trips to the library, all of us doing our best to sit criss cross applesauce, he would walk us through the standard Spanish greetings.  Buenos dias.  Buenas tardes.  Buenas noches.  Como estás?  Asi asi.  Mr. Gil.  A sort of pudgy latino man with glasses and stringy white-grey hair.  B.F. Day.  Anyway, back to “Holes.”  Probably one of my favorite books growing up.  An mistakable cover of the top half of the character Stanley’s head, in the midst of a desert, a great story, and many memorable characters.  Why do I still remember people called “Mr. Sir” and “The Warden” and “Mom” and “X-Ray” and “Stanley Yelnats” being a palindrome, and “Zero” and peaches and the top of a place called God’s Thumb and surviving off of onions.  A book would have to be more than just good to be remembered 15-20 years down the line.  And it helped that the movie was pretty good.  For some reason there are certain things about that book that still resonate beyond just the people I remember or the events that transpired.  Stanley, who is convinced that his family is plagued by bad luck, is under the impression that the reason he gets sent off to camp to dig holes is because of his family’s curse.  Why he got in trouble wasn’t in his hands.  It was a manifestation of happenings out of his control.  We find out later that his family is inextricably linked to the family of “Zero,” another camp member.  What all of the other guys say who have been there for various amounts of time, and by then are camp veterans, is that the first hole you dig is always the hardest.  Then the next day after blisters, dehydration, and a day full of intense labor, they say the second day is always the hardest and so on and so on.  

At some point while writing this first paragraph and reminiscing about the book I was thinking of how that saying and feeling of hearing something like that applies, in some ways, to the pursuit of a dream.  Some might disagree and say that it’s the opposite.  Every day everything starts to get a little easier.  Probably depends on how you look at it, really, either you see it half empty or half full.  Now, if I was to look at it as every day gets a little harder, which sometimes is how it feels to be on your own path by yourself in a city on the pursuit of a dream, then yeah every day does get a little harder when the dream is still an indeterminable distance away.  Yet, through the difficulty, no matter how hard it gets, you slowly but surely get acclimated to the task and I think it actually becomes easier to make it through.  Yeah, you might get another couple of blisters, but those blisters become callouses.  Yeah, you might be longing for a cup of water, but your body becomes equipped to deal with the environment and the circumstances.  The hard can only remain hard for so long.  There is facility in difficulty and a creation of the difficult in the ease.  It would behoove me and behoove us all if we, during this process, think that why we are doing what we are doing and trying our best to accomplish the task is because of something out of our hands.  Maybe A doesn’t quite equal A in this scenario.  Maybe this equation isn’t so clear cut.  What I learned from the book I recently read is that their are so many things that are outside of our control.  What is in our control is how we respond to what happens.  How do we move forward?

You know, after reading the above paragraph I realized that I kind of wrote myself into an indecipherable maze.  A labyrinth of points, but no real kicker.  Or a kicker that didn’t come from anywhere.  That’s OK.  If there is anything that I hope comes to you or comes to me after a year of writing, talking in circles, getting somewhere, getting nowhere, unblocking traffic jams in my head, is that I’m still trying to figure out where I’m going.  Very much so.  With my hope to do some resolutions tomorrow and really take some time to try and figure out what I want to change, reduce, increase in the following year I came to my couch, opened up TextEdit and thought, “Damn…what the hell am I gonna write about tonight?”  That happened a lot this year and the mind, at least for the first little bit, can be extremely unforgiving.  I mean, if you were to take fifteen minutes of staring at a screen, it would seem unexpected to have a train of thought that is largely positive.  In my head, every passing minute leads to another question.  What are you doing?  What’s a matter with you?  Five minutes and nothing?  What’s going on, dude?  Why are you wasting your time with this?  And so on.  And so on.  I didn’t have a summary planned for tonight.  I didn’t feel like talking about the day today because I don’t even remember the day happening.  I’ve literally been spending the past several months not knowing what the hell was gonna come out of my brain.  I wouldn’t be surprised if I spent just as much time staring off and thinking about what I was going to write about than time actually spent writing.  You know the 10,000 hours theory popularized by Malcolm Gladwell?  If you spend 10,000 hours working on your craft in a particular field that will translate into you being world-class at that particular field.  I wonder how many hours were spent this year writing.  Bullshitting?  Thinking about what I was going to write about?  I wonder if that all contributes.

I look back at this past year and wonder how I improved.  I don’t really remember where I started, to be honest.  I never was really in the habit of writing the past couple of years.  I’d only put pen to paper or hand to keyboard when something absolutely needed to come out.  This year, I wonder if I did too much.  Did I force it?  Was it worth it?  That’s the biggest question I hoped to answer and I think I already have.  The goal as the year went on became more crystallized because I began to see how the exercise of writing every day was going to lead into something more focused.  Script writing.  Writing screenplays.  Writing for the theatre.  Writing plays and movies.  Writing plays and movies that I can be in.  I think.  Right?  That’s what I want to do?  Yo, who the fuck knows anymore.  I don’t know if one day the light just shines out of nowhere, but I don’t think it has happened for me yet and I’ve read too many articles and listened too closely to people I admire to think that it’s intelligent to sit back and wait for that day to come.  It’s uncomfortable.  My mind really goes haywire these last couple days of the year.  There’s a lot to reflect on.  A lot to be proud of.  A lot to overthink.  A lot to be distracted by.  But that’s life.  That’s life in New York.  That’s life as a 26 year old.  I guess.  This is supposed to be the prime!  Mid twenties.  On the way to late twenties.  There shouldn’t be anything to be discouraged about.  

I don’t want this post seem depressing.  That wouldn’t be a good way to end the year.  Don’t worry though.  After these resolutions tomorrow I’m going to write the first five days of 2018 to fulfill my initial goal which was to write the entire year.  I guess I didn’t write the first five days of 2017.  Go figure.  Now, if this kind of mood returns on the January 5th?  Then you can be disappointed.  Shit, I would be too.  I’m hoping for a magically given better attitude in the following year.  January 1st I expect to wake up a changed man.  What?  That’s a recipe for disaster?  Hey.  I can still hope can’t I?  I still get delusional sometimes when I read those stories of some crazy accident happening and all of a sudden a man or woman can speak another language.  Completely changed.  I don’t want to run away from myself in 2018.  If there is anything this year has taught me it’s that 24 hours isn’t shit.  Mine as well be 45 minutes.  Because at the end of the day, when we’re trying to remember everything that happened.  All the good and all the bad.  How much can we really remember?  If that isn’t a sign that I need to be doing more with my life than I don’t know what is.  What does Ben Affleck say in Good Will Hunting?  “Tomorrow, I’ll wake up and I’ll be 50…and I’ll still be doing this shit.  And you [Matt Damon], you’re sitting on a winning lottery ticket, but you’re too much of a pussy to cash it in.”  

Will Hunting or Chucky?  Is the next hole to be dug the easiest or the hardest?  I don’t know.