Dear ESB: Why is life so hard?

My husband and I are backing out of a business endeavor we were super excited about. Our visions weren't lining up with our prospective partners, and we realized that we weren't willing to give what they were expecting. It's fine, but I'm back to feeling lost in the whole "what am I doing with my life?" game. I've had it with my Etsy store, and always knew I wanted to switch gears when my son started school. But I'm just feeling overwhelmed. I suck at working for other people, so I need to start my own project again…. I guess I just wish sometimes that I wasn't so PASSIONATE. I should have just been an accountant.

#whitegirlproblems

*****

I just had a very similar conversation with a writer friend -- she said something like “I feel sorry for people who don’t have something they’re passionate about” and I was like BUT WOULDN’T THAT BE EASIER

Lately I've been in a bit of a funk myself.

I don't want a real job (or: I prefer my real job to run 20 weeks/year) but I'm terrible at managing my time. I scaled back on blogging to give myself space to write, and then spent most of January and February staring at Twitter and/or playing Threes. I decided to use our tax refund to make a short film,* which feels amazing -- I've been casting! and location scouting! and talking about shots with my dp! I feel like a real director again! -- but now I have to get my act together and write the feature script that comes next and YES LIFE IS HARD

Wait, was I supposed to be giving you advice? I'm not sure I'm qualified.

All I can do is send you a ginormous hug across the interwebs and tell you to a) Cut yourself some slack, and then b) GET TO IT. It's okay to take baby steps. It doesn't have to be all good and finished and perfect all at once.



Sophie Vlaming by Hicham Riad for Marie Claire Belgium (March 2014) via visual optimism

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*Thank you, H.

Hello, friends.

I feel like I owe you a real post.

Like, something more than yet another Dear ESB (though there are plenty of those coming... don't worry).

Should I fill you in on what I've been doing? Just finished a casting gig for that pretty cool fashion-related reality TV show. Pitching one film project, madly drafting a new draft of another.

Life is pretty good, you guys. Lately I've been feeling like an honest-to-god writer. (Though I'm breaking one of my own rules by talking about it here. Rule #10: Stop talking about writing and write.)

Weirdly, when things are going well in other realms, it makes me clam up on the interwebs. I'm always more inclined to blog when I'm avoiding doing something else.

But there's nothing to avoid at the moment. There's just me, tapping away on my laptop. Watching American Horror Story: Coven with my adorable husband. Making lentil soup. Going to yoga.

Whoops I just broke another rule: DON'T BE THAT ASSHOLE WHO TALKS ABOUT GOING TO YOGA




OMIGOD I'M AN ASSHOLE. I'M A BORING BORING ASSHOLE



























You are all unsubscribing right now, aren't you?? Shit.

Nancy Fouts via The Independent

Remember that new leaf I turned over?

Hogwash and poppycock.

Caffeine-induced dementia.

I've been working this….fun! really quite fun! but surprisingly exhausting day job for 6 weeks now, and I can barely manage to get out of bed in the morning and put on a reasonably cute outfit, let alone get up in time to WRITE for a fucking hour before work.

I missed the last deadline I set for myself. I've set another one, which is LOOMING. But I'm thinking maybe I should just let me off the hook for the next month until I get back to my sweet little life and my desk in the corner of the kitchen.

Beating myself up about it doesn't seem to be helping.

Anyhoo.

Thanks for listening, you guys. It always helps me to blog it out.

Angela Lindvall by Mark Borthwick for purple FASHION, Summer 1997

happy spring.

this morning i got up at 4:50am to take my best girl to the airport.

h and i were home by 6:20am, and we did NOT go back to bed. 

instead, i had a second cup of coffee and spent a whole hour with my script. not the new one i've been tearing my hair out outlining, but the old one i haven't touched in 6 months. i've got a rewrite due on april 11, and i've been avoiding it like the plague.

i actually accomplished something. as in: wrote a few lines of dialogue. thought up a few new scenes. 

AMAZEBALLS.

maybe i'm turning over a new leaf.

maybe i really can hold down a full-time job (for the next 9 weeks) and keep up the ol blog and turn in this damn rewrite on time and figure out how to promote my first LA screening.

HAPPY SPRING!

here's to new leaves.

Photo by Michael Graydon via Forty-Sixth at Grace

It Chooses You

A book review from one of my favorite readers:*

Hello fellow Miranda July lover/person I've never met,

I just read her book It Chooses You, a book she wrote about finishing the script for The Future. It was incredibly sad, inspiring, and comforting. I highly recommend it. 

I found it to be a great meditation on process and discipline and distraction and muse-chasing.

I bought it at Skylight at 2pm and just finished it now. And I went to the spa and the grocery store with my husband somewhere in the middle, so it's not much of a commitment. 

Also, I cried.

*Who am I kidding? You are all my favorite readers.

I've discovered the cure for writer's block

Lie in bed with a pad + pencil on the floor next to you.

That's it. 

Just lie there.

Allow yourself to doze.

Pretty soon you'll be writing stuff down, I swear to god.

NOTE: Your phone must be off and way the hell in the other room. No tweeting/checking email. This is an exercise in zen.

DIY Pixel Painting from Wit & Whistle via Pennyweight via Rachel Arnold

How to....

Except for the cupcakes part.

Fuck cupcakes.

I don't like tea that much either.


Okay, here's my list:

1. make lists (obv)

2. eat (goat cheese on toast! with avocado!)

3. laugh (sure)

4. stay off the fucking internets for a few hours, why don't you??

5. hash out a synopsis with your new writing partner (i.e. ACCOMPLISH SOMETHING)

6. drive to glendale and see my week with marilyn or

7. track down dvds of the wild one and easy rider at the library

8. take a nap

9. take a hike

10. take a hot bath while

11. watching an enthralling ep of selling la

12. sleep the sleep of the just


Words to live by via The Shiny Squirrel

there's someplace I'd rather be.

i wrote a guest post about it for pour porter. a non-wedding, non-fashion-related guest post, if you can believe it.

go have a read.

photo by william eggleston via art blart

how to finish a screenplay, in 12 easy steps

1. shut off your phone + your internet for 24 hours. you heard me, 24 HOURS.

2. do 3 loads of laundry.

3. take a nap. a long one.

4. stare at the computer.

5. stare at yourself in the mirror.

6. WRITE

7. EDIT

8. WRITE WRITE WRITE

9. sleep

10. go for a run. (i'm kidding! that didn't happen.)

11. WRITE EDIT WRITE EDIT WRITE WRITE WRITE

12. DELETE. nothing drastic. just a couple of extraneous scenes.


tada! only one year after i started work on this draft....

IT'S FINISHED.

still a little rough in patches, but it's finished, you guys. as in, it has a motherf*cking ending. the previous draft didn't have an ending, so i consider this a major accomplishment.

i'm mixing a martini as we speak. (not kidding.)

Exorcism of the Last Painting I Ever Made, performance by Tracie Emin, 1996 via TeenAngster via myloveforyou via You Should Take Care + Flash glam trash!

If I were to get married now...................

from Lauren of kidchamp dot net

our wedding was an ice core, with bits of sediment and atmosphere from each of our lives' layers. i proposed to joe in college and bought my dress immediately (off the rack at south coast plaza, but that's another story); it sat in my mother's closet for six years, waiting for us to be ready to be married. my grandfather knew he would be too sick to come abroad with us, so he gave me the heavy coins he'd saved from his final trip to england; i carried them in my jacket pocket after the ceremony so that i could buy myself a pint from him, as he'd instructed, on my wedding day (i wore the shoes i'd found when i went home to california for his funeral). our people read shakespeare for when we ditched class to fall in love in stratford upon avon, rilke for our turbulent early twenties, and wallace stevens for the miraculous stillness in Finally Getting Our Shit Together. how could any other wedding be ours?

i'm hugely change-averse, but i'm also a greedy little maximalist. i wouldn't edit the wedding we had, but i'll happily pile all kinds of things on top; call it a second wedding, if you like. "i have bad news," i tell joe in the morning. "i love you more today than i did yesterday." i'd buy myself two pints this time.

piled on top:

- a comme des garçons collage dress. comme des garçons pieces make me feel like dancing with everyone i've ever met.

- a rick owens boiled-wool jacket. i wore a grey denim motorcycle jacket over my wedding dress the first time; "we'd have cued up madonna on the jukebox if we'd known," said the delighted bartender at the turf.

- stella mccartney faux patent heels. i've upped my vegetarian game lately and have stopped buying leather.

- the grey shih messenger bag i've carried nearly every day for the last four years. one's wedding day is not the one on which to mess around with a bag which can't hold anything. (i'd also bring my camera.)

- an omega seamaster, because that's what james bond wears.

as for extra intangibles, i'd add a fourth reading for our ceremony: a letter from felix gonzalez-torres to ross laycock.

(Visit kidchamp's Polyvore set for complete photo credits. And catch up with the rest of the "If I were to get married now..................." series here.)

g'morning

 

Did I mention I'm drinking coffee again?

I finally dragged my ass to see a neurologist, and she put me on a new regimen for my headaches. High doses of Magnesium + Vitamin B2, plus a new drug that really seems to be working but offers a wee bit of drowsiness as a side effect.*  Obviously I had to reintroduce the one cup of coffee in the morning.

I wish I could say that coffee has enabled me to write the BRILLIANT ENDING of my script, but I'm not there yet. Maybe if I keep mentioning it here you all will hold me accountable? Either that or you'll get really bored really fast.

Anyhoo. There's a new Dear ESB up on 100 Layer Cake today, on the scandalous topic of attire for the mother of the bride.

(Image via emmas designblogg)
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*Mom, if you're reading this, I apologize for not updating you. Whoopsy.

suuuuuuuuuuuuckfest

I haven't been feeling like my cheerful, snarky self lately.

I decided to kick coffee while I finish my feature script, which in retrospect was maybe not the smartest plan. (Though dealing with daily, grinding headaches was not helping me out either.)*

Without that one cup of coffee waiting for me, I find I have no incentive to get out of bed in the morning and hit the computer. Srsly. It's an enormous problem.

(Image via YIMMY'S YAYO)
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*Say "Are you sure they're not caffeine headaches?" and you lose a testicle. Yes, they are caffeine headaches. Turns out I get them when I have any caffeine at all. Ever.

I want to be more like John Waters

I already linked to this article once, back when I though it was hilarious that John Waters used Crème de la Mer(de). But here's what really stuck with me:

Waters is unusually regimented. He wakes up at exactly 6:10 every morning and reads newspapers and drinks tea until 8. He starts writing “right at eight o’clock—not 8:01, not 7:59,” and works until lunchtime. Waters is rigidly devoted to these morning sessions, and his hired wife plans his travel accordingly. He will go somewhere a day early or stay a day late rather than fly in the morning, even if it means staying at an airport hotel, “because I need to write five days a week,” he says firmly. “As far as I can remember I have done that, at least for 25 years. I most never miss a day."

I've been making excuses, but it's time to develop a regime. (I.E. lay off Twitter in the morning?!)

(Photo by Nan Goldin for New York Magazine)