Been having a bit of a rough time.

I'm married now and zooming in on 30. I had a little bit of an existential crisis and have decided to start taking some online classes to make sure I'm not stuck answering phones or working overnight shifts my entire life. Mostly this has made me feel better but sometimes it feels like quitting on chasing my dream. This is tough for me.

Certainly its going to eat up time that could have been dedicated to writing or getting Future Spence off the ground. Of coruse with the economy being what it is, the odds of raising the funds needed to shoot even a modest version of Future Spence seem some what bleak. (I do have some reason for optimism- maybe I'll get to that in a bit.)

Anyway, before my classes started (they just started the first week of this month) I pushed myself to finish a new screenplay. I let myself begin to believe that this was the one. This was going to be the one that launched my career and maybe... oh, but hey I'm getting a head of myself... there is something else going on too...

So my doctor here in New York took me off the cipro I've been taking for, oh, 7 years now, saying that it can't possibly be doing anything for me. I was worried my whole immune system would crash. The last time I came off cipro, if you recall, I wound up with a case of 'better' strep (believe me its not as great as it sounds) and had to have my tonsils taken out. Then later that year wound up in the hospital with what I thought was a crohn's disease attack... I say thought because my doctor doesn't believe I actually have crohn's...

You see way back in our sophomore year of high school, when I landed in the hospital for the first time, they tested my stool and it came back positive for E. Coli. This was never related back to my mother and I. Instead I went through a battery of awful tests and they found a slight abnormality which could potentially signify something, which in turn could potentially, but not necessarily, signify crohn's. My new doc says that at the least its a weak diagnosis and more likely than not I don't have anything and I never did. I'm going in for a colonoscopy next week and hopefully it will be conclusive... oh and that time I was in the hospital in college? I thought a night of drinking had triggered a crohn's attack- I was basing that decision to go the hospital on criteria given to me for a crohn's sufferer. Really I probably just drank too much and needed some sleep, a banana and a gatorade. The better strep was, in all likeliness, a complete coincidence and I've been needlessly taking medicine and subjecting myself to tests for a decade for no reason. I've got a weak stomach and am lactose intolerant and that's probably it. OK- so that's what I found out shortly before Thanksgiving. Now back to the writing bit...

...so I have this other burden on my mind now- I've been making major life decisions for the last ten years based on the belief that 1) I had crohn's disease and 2) if I ever didn't have insurance I would die or go broke trying to pay for my very, very expensive medicine. This meant that when I left NYU with my degree in film I didn't free lance crew like all my friends, instead I needed to take a steady job with health benefits which meant taking a job I didn't want, etc. etc. Something that continues to be true to this day. (There were other decisions I've made too that I might have done differently, that I prefer not to think about as I'm very happy with my personal life, but at the least, I probably would have gone abroad for a semester in college...)

I let all this sweep me up. Yeah, it sucks that I never crewed but all that can be changed with this screenplay! It's exciting! It's funny! It can sell! I know it! And so I ploughed through this- writing it faster than I think I've ever written anything. Thought it was pretty good too- might need some tweaking here or there but, yes, this could be a hit. It had sort of a golden child sensibility... If it goes over I can still back out of these accounting classes... I can be a writer! I don't even need insurance right away! I send it off to my manager...

He didn't like. And that's it. I don't really have a plan B. I have one contact, he's it, he didn't like it, that's it. I talked to him again tonight, the first call got interrupted and then he was off to Sundance the next day... so he calls me up tonight and we hash it out a little bit more. It was a bittersweet phone call. He told me several complimentary things, flattering really, about my writing, he thinks I'm talented and a good writer but he hasn't really liked any of my premises since WA vs. Dr. A. He felt like too many young writers have a time travel comedy, so Future Spence is out. He thinks the Sidekick is unsellable as there are only two or maybe three teens that can get a movie made (this also relates to WA vs. Dr. A's fate). And now Dinner Theater- he liked it, laughed at parts, but wasn't laughing out loud throughout the script. He liked the action but there isn't enough to sell it as an action, and to use his words (more or less), 'you went for a very narrow target, and, uh, its not that that's not worth doing, but it just didn't really work out this time.'

I had previously asked him about maybe introducing me to an agent. I got the impression that I really shouldn't pursue that line of questioning, as he basically left it this way, he likes my writing and will always read anything I write and give me notes on it, but he's only going to try to sell something he loves and now three of my last four are not projects that he's loved. The conversation felt like one of those conversations you probably had at some point in high school when you were dating someone that you liked but were kind of ready to move on- not a break up but sort of a hint that, at the least, you weren't destine to be together forever. Still it was nice to hear that I'm pretty... I mean a good writer.

So, now I'm a guy, two years from thirty, with a wife who wants kids, working a dead end job and taking accounting classes... online.

I've sacrificed so much to pursue this goal. I'm not willing to give it up, but I'm worried that I'm narrowing in on a break point when I'll have to get my shit together, grow up and push myself to engage in the job that I have- or risk losing the attainable goals of a house and kids.

Its such a boot to the scrot. I've got a couple of other irons in the fire, but Po Po's been 'working' on the graphic novel since 2005 at this point. No end in sight. I'm optimistic about Page Or Panel (pageorpanel.com) but if it doesn't pan out I'm just going to be a guy with an odd hobby.

In related news, slowly, the people at work have seen me jotting down notes and typing away at my screenplays and have all found out that I write movies... and now everytime they see me they ask, 'Hey when are we gonna see something of yours on the big screen?' Its my own personal hell. People trying to be nice to me but only succeeding in making me feel like shit. Its going to eventually turn me into an asshole.

OK, well that's enough bitching from me. I due hope that I am Crohn's free. That would be nice (even if the news came a solid five years too late). Who knows? Maybe a nice medical malpractice suite would cheer me up.