Write it down!

Twice in the past week I've had good ideas for either the current screen play or for another one and both times I did not write them down, assuming I'd remember them. I didn't. 

So incredibly stupid of me. I instantly should've written them down but now they are gone for forever. :-/ I know writers are told to keep a notepad next to their bed and with them at all times for things just like this. I will start doing that or using my email on my phone. Anything. Luckily, while watching Argo yesterday I came up with a title and emailed it to myself. 

In other news, all of these Hurricane Days have given me something to do - dig up old books pertaining to screen writing.

I'm just glad these didn't make it to storage or I never would've found them. I've read the Screenwriter's Bible at least three times. It's an awesome resource for when I don't know how to format something. And since part of this takes place in Russia, I have been re-learning Russian with books I used to teach myself basic Russian a decade ago. (Side story: I signed up to take a Russian language class at the University of Arizona which I famously dropped out of and have no been able to find a class anywhere nearby since then).  The most difficult part of Russian is memorizing the Cryllic alphabet.

Also, another side story: I love learning languages. I took three years of Spanish in high school as well as two years in college and lived in Spain and had a program there where we only spoke Spanish. So I used to know it fluently and can understand it still... speaking it is a whole different story. I let too much time pass. However in college I also took Hebrew, Italian and German as well. I did very well in those classes and can speak them all conversationally. I can even read Hebrew. One of the coolest things though was right after my semester in Spain but before I took Italian, I visited my foreign exchange student, Moritz, in Italy and while he and his family speak perfect English, their friends did not so I spoke Spanish and they spoke Italian and the languages are close enough that we could understand each other like 80% of the time. Very cool.

My movie

In all of my free time (which has not been much) for the past 3 weeks, I have been busily re-writing the screenplay that I began in the summer of 2002 while living in Spain. I even printed out all 128 pages in case power went out so I could still work on it.

I have spent weeks completely re-doing almost every section and researching what it would actually take to accomplish what was written. I think I have it nailed down.  So as of 5:00p today I re-registered the new version with the WGA. It doesn't mean anything other than if a story comes out that's close to this one and I think it's plagiarized, I can sue for copyright infringement. It doesn't mean the script will be made or anything like that. 

I've had a really good time writing and researching. I even finally gave it a name. It's been untitled for quite some time. I get really excited to be able to sit down and work on it. And thanks to Google drive, I can do it anytime, anywhere. You know something's on your brain when you hear a song and can picture where it would fit in the script. I love that feeling. I've been fleshing out characters and even came up with ideas of who I think could play them, as well as adding background to some parts, deleting stupid parts and rearranging. 

I spent a good chunk of my weekend and today working on it. But I am still super self conscious of it so don't ask to read it, the answer is no :) I won't even let Scott read it. The only people who can will be the agents I send it to in a month or so. It's just so deeply personal and part of me that if someone I knew read it and didn't like it, I think it might kill me.

Writing movies is a hell of a lot more fun than watching them :)

Next steps: read some screen plays to make sure mine is formatted correctly and upload to Triggerstreet to get feedback.

White washin'

Wax on, wax off. I guess it's only fitting that I am painting the shed white today, which is the same day we are wearing out karate costumes for a Halloween party. LOL. 

Before

After one coat:

After two coats:

It needs a third coat but it'll have to wait until after the hurricane.

Loneliness

A friend once told me this story, "And someone once told me about a guy who, when he would get lonely, would call someone who he thought might be lonelier. Gave him a chance to be doing something for someone, even just the listening, and it got his focus shifted around, however briefly."

Growing up I was pretty independent.  I never asked anyone for help. And I always went out of my way to help others. That is, until the incident. When the panic attacks started, that was one of the fears that started. I could not be physically alone in a room. Think about what that might entail. Picture every moment of a typical day for you and imagine all of the times you are alone or need to be alone. I could not do it. Only when I was having panic attacks, of course. Which, as stated before, could be anywhere from a day to a week to 4 months. Straight. Twenty four hours a day. I would find any way I could to be around people. Even if I wasn't talking to them or even necessarily with them. Sleeping also was no good because it meant I would be alone as well. It was messed up to say the least. I would stay awake until exhaustion set in and I literally could not keep my eyes open anymore. Driving to work was near impossible but I found a way to hook up a portable dvd player to my car system and have Friends playing for the hour long drive and it definitely helped. The radio didn't, talk or music. But Friends did. 

This hasn't happened in a very long time but it's giving me the creeps thinking about it. I know what it's like to feel utterly alone. I've even known what it's like to feel alone in a packed room of friends. I imagine the feeling is what a mini black hole would feel like if it were centered in the center of your chest. To just wonder if people care about you even a little bit. If they appreciated anything I did for them a little bit. To not know if I was someone's last call of the night. 

As an adult, I have always had friends, and good one at that but I am starting to feel like I am losing my ground again. I sometimes feel so weak and not confident. Which is not how I ever was before. I feel lost sometimes. Like, do I really have anyone out there who is a best friend? I have some amazing friends. Don't get me wrong. But do I have someone I could tell anything to without judgement? I'm not sure. Ok, this is off topic. 

This is why my heart breaks for lonely/awkward people who can't snap out of it like I did. Unfortunately I have a great amount f empathy for people and can literally feel other people's pain. Strange sensation to have coursing through my joints. I guess it will always be a small fear for me. Even though I can be alone in rooms now, it's not my favorite thing. And I hate being in silence. Like right now I have a movie on in the background as I type even though I'm not watching it. I wonder if this is something I will ever be able to get over. 

It's important for me to meditate on the fact that there are people out there who don't have anyone in their lives and are incredibly sad and lonely. But it's hard to think about for long because of the empathy. I am beyond blessed. So I am going to start doing what my friend told me. When I feel insecure and lonely, I'm going to call someone who might need to hear from someone and hopefully I end up making other people's lives better and strengthening relationships in the process. Maybe it'll help me feel not so alone when I am in those funks. 

Things you should stop caring about right now

I have two really interesting articles I want to share:
1. Thirty two things you should stop caring about right now
2. 10 things your commencement speaker won't tell you

Highly recommend. 

Earthquake!

I just went through the 3rd earthquake I've been through. All of them were lame and small which is good because I have no interest in dealing with property damage/injuries/death. I don't even remember the first one I was in. The second one was in 2001 and I was in Springfield and the house shook for 10 seconds and woke me up but there was no damage. This time it only lasted about 2 seconds and the entire house shook, almost like a really big wind gust. There was a loud noise too. The dogs freaked out like we were being invaded by aliens. Scott went outside to check and said it wasn't windy then he walked around the house and found nothing. I got a little freaked out but didn't think it was an earthquake. About 20 minutes later, everyone on facebook was posting about an earthquake so I googled it. It was a 4.5 centered in Maine somewhere.

One thing that's weird to think about is - will there be more? I mean we are sitting near fault lines. Where there's one, there's bound to be more or after shocks. Here's hoping to no more. 

This picture is hilarious:

Community service

Scott and I have been going to church since early September and we really like it. We even joined a small group that meets Wednesday nights. One of the things the church is doing is practicing Micah 6:8 - and the way they're applying it is through community service. The only weekend we could do was this one. So we went and helped pain rooms at a men's rehabilitation center. 

Here is the before:

And in process:

We're not the best but we got it done. We did two coats of paint and scrubbed the baseboards. Scott also filled in some holes. I have so much paint on me, it's not funny.

It felt good but boy was it tiring. 

I want to do it more often. I used to do community service, volunteer and fund raise all the time. In high school I came up with an organization called Help A Neighbor where I went door to door to collect over 8,000 pieces of clothing. And in college I did Relay for Life, Ali & Dad's Army, Habitat for Humanity and Big Brothers/Big Sisters. Since I've done a few others here and then but nothing substantive. I am going to start doing this more again :)

Writing a movie

I can not put into words (ironically) how alive I feel when writing a screenplay. It is the most invigorating feeling to craft a story and develop characters. It is incredibly addicting and sometimes, it feels like what I would imagine drugs feel like - I need to do it. I can't stop thinking about it. Obviously not all the time but I'll go over ideas in my mind to see if they are realistic enough and try to come up with better ways to write something. I've been doing this a lot in my car. 

Another thing I love to do is listen to all kinds of songs and see if I can play certain scenes in my mind along to the song. Kind of like choosing a soundtrack. 

And I just found this amazing website where you can read all kinds of famous screen plays. I like to do this not only to see formatting for different things but also get other ideas form different screen writers. you get to see how different the directors make the movie from the original version. And how they saw certain things happen. One of my favorite screen plays to read is The Bourne Identity. I'm not sure why. That was one of the few movies that was better than the book and they did a good job working in the most important parts.

Just like books, often, the script is better than the movie.

Lawn signs

The end of my lawn sign saga has come. I finally have signs for all of the major candidates running for election after 1.5 months of asking and begging. The election 2012 project is under way. 

I'm still a little pissed that every other campaign could spare one measly lawn sign - even Gary Johnson, Virgil Goode and Jill Stein - but Elizabeth Warren and Barack Obama's campaigns couldn't. Lame.

Teaching middle school?

Yesss! It only took a couple days but here it is. I am now licensed to teach history in grades 5-12 in MA. 

Again, I have no plans to do this but you never know what life will bring you!

Week 2

My parents came home for the second week to clean out the garage and fix the shed.

Again I wish I had taken before picture but I didn't. We loaded their truck with most of the stuff below and it'll be at the dump tomorrow. The other stuff they are taking home to NY. These are mid process. 

And here is the garage after:

Screenwriting

I know August was "pursue a passion" month but I didn't feel very motivated to do so then. Over the past few days I've had this strong urge to complete a screenplay (movie) I began writing in the summer of 2002 while I was living in Europe. When I started writing it, I did not have a laptop or cell phone or anything with me to type on but I hand wrote it all and when I got back to America I almost literally couldn't stop writing. I registered it with the WGA. I even enrolled it onto Triggerstreet (TS) which used to be a site that you could upload your screenplay to and get feedback on and if you were really lucky, you could win a contest to have it produced. I am not sure what that site does now. I haven't touched that screenplay since 2007. It doesn't have a real title now - only a working title. I can't find the one. 

It was super crappy when it first started but after all the comments I got from TS it drastically improved. I read tons of books on how to write screenplays and I read actual screenplays of movies I'd seen, most notably Good Will Hunting. Screenplay writing has many rules including what needs to be capitalized, how many spaces can be after this symbol "-", how many montages a screenplay should have, and how many spaces to indent for exteriors and dialogue. All of which I have since forgotten but can easily relearn. I feel alive when I am in the mood to write and am actually writing. I wish I knew what dictates when I am in the mood to write and when I'm not. Writer's block sucks and this last one has lasted 5 years! Wish me luck as I edit this beast! 

Gray Hair

I am not particularly scared of my own death but I am not a huge fan of getting old or thinking that statistically speaking I may only have 40 years left on earth. Forty years seems like such a short time. And in that time I have to raise kids and do a million more things. 

I am starting to get gray hair. I've had it for awhile but it's starting to become more noticeable. There are more of them and they are longer. If I am in harsh lighting or in the car I can see it. My dad's mom had a full head of gray hair very early in her life - something like 30. I guess it doesn't help that in my life I've dyed my hair a LOT and that it's been purple, blue, green, red, brown, and bleach blonde. Not smart. 

Shed

Today begins the beginning of the end. My parents will be coming home once a week from now until who knows when to get boxes from the house to bring back to their house in NY to get this house ready to sell by the spring. 

My mom came home to clean out the shed which was a disaster. I wish I had taken a before picture to show you all but I didn't. Here is all of the stuff separated into "keep" and "throw" piles. Everything in the truck is going to the dump tomorrow. 

And here it is nearly empty. Way to go mom!

Being paralyzed

Update on September: huge task. This will need to continue for a long time. 

October: Oh boy. A big one. October - Get rid of fear. I tend to be fearful of ridiculous things. It's time to face some of them head on.

I have been paralyzed before. It's not a secret or something I haven't brought up in the past. I have left fear consume me in the past. To the point where I dropped out of college for a semester.  And almost out of grad school. And a number of other things.

I had never experience panic or anxiety before. Here is how it started and how it evolved into something I could not contain. And how I've somewhat managed to come back from it. 

It was January 2004 and I was sick of the disgusting Massachusetts weather so I decided to apply for a semester at the University of Arizona. I was accepted for the fall of 2004, and I was incredibly thrilled. I had never been to that area of the country but had always wanted to go and more importantly I wanted to avoid a winter and have one year of warm weather. I had spent a semester in Spain previously but this was for a longer time. Still, it was in the USA and flights home would be feasible. Plus my parents said they would visit. 

My friend, Meghan and I eagerly planned a 5 week road trip through the entire USA ending with me at the U of A. I needed to drive because at this time in my life I had let one fear control me. My fear of flying. I had had a really rough flight in February 2002 that kind of scarred me. I literally thought we were going to crash. Meghan and I planned to go literally everywhere. We were told our trip was too ambitious. It wasn't. We went everywhere we said we wanted to go and even had a week left over to go to more places. We hit 35 states that trip. (And after a subsequent week long Spring 2005 trip, we managed to visit 48 states). 

About a week before the trip I started to feel something rumbling in my stomach that was making me nervous. It was nothing I had ever felt before. I can still mentally transport myself to this time because it was so incredibly raw. I remember the night we left - July 26 - I spent a few hours crying but could not figure out what was wrong. I thought it might be anticipating homesickness. I had experienced that feeling for, I am not exaggerating, 15 seconds when leaving for Spain. But the feeling quickly went away as Meghan and I drove down the coast. We were making an overnight drive to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. 

Around 2p the next day I was filling up our gas tank at a random place in North Carolina when Meghan went inside to go to the bathroom. And something inside me SNAPPED. It felt like someone had ignited a stick of dynamite in me. I started breathing really heavily and my mind felt like it was wired. I couldn't stop the racing thoughts that kept coming back to leaving for 5 months and all the things I would miss at home. And what if my parents died while I was gone? What? Where did that come from? I am not a crier but I couldn't stop crying and felt like I couldn't breathe. For a few hours, Meghan and I tried to figure out what was wrong. I traced it back to her leaving to go inside and me thinking to myself that I was going to be alone in AZ for 5 months. I called my parents and talked to them and begged them to let me come home if this feeling wouldn't go away. They didn't like the idea but could hear something was really wrong so they said ok. Instantly, once I knew I had permission to come home if I needed to and wouldn't be thought of as a failure, all the panic ceased.

Meghan and I enjoyed 4.5 weeks of amazing adventures with 0 panic attacks. I thought it was over. Then on August 17, Meghan and I ventured to the meteor crater in AZ but were too late and arrived after it closed. About 1/4 mile away from the entrance, the car started to overheat. Something was wrong with my little car. We called AAA and they towed us back to our hotel in Flaggstaff then we went out and hit up Chilis and drank our faces off. I drank way too much and was sick the entire next day which was ok because the car was begin fixed. But while we were holed up in the hotel room, the panic started to set in because Flaggstaff was our last stop before Tucson - my ultimate destination. 

By the way, just writing about all of this is giving me chills because I remember these moments so vividly and the terror is still there subconsciously. This is my way of confronting that fear. 

Again, something flicked that light switch but I had never failed at anything before so I fought m way through it and we ended up at the U of A on August 19. Meghan and I tried to snap me out of it. I was placed in a freshman dorm wehre I was the only senior and my original roommate that I had gotten to know over AIM for a few months before had transferred to a California School for softball. I was left with this random girl who was already rushing a sorority. And all I could think of was how scary this situation was because my body was reacting in this weird way. I talked to my RA, my RD, the director of my exchange program, and to school officials. I also attended a church service and met with their pastor and he prayed for me. I even switched out of the freshman dorm into a senior housing complex. I tried breathing exercise. Nothing seemed to work. I had phone conversations with my mom and some of her friends because my parents had gone to Mexico that week and I couldn't reach them. It was round the clock, 24-hour panic for 4 days straight. Exhausting. 

In the end, I asked Meghan to not leave me. To not get on her plane and come home and instead to drive home with me because clearly I was not in the state to do it alone. To ask for help is something I am not good at so this was a big deal for me to ask. And she was awesome - she did it. But unlike the first time the feeling did not go away when I dropped out of the U of A. Instead my mind continued to focus on all the crazy things I had been thinking about - what if my parents died? What if I died? What if I never got married? What if I never had kids? There were thousands of questions swirling around at once and I couldn't focus or find any answers. 

I tried talk to my friend, Justin, who had gone on a semester exchange and he was the one who gave me the idea to do it and he said if I dropped out, what would stop me from dropping out of everything in life? If I gave into my fear once, what would I become. His question didn't help at the time but it has helped a LOT since then. I constantly ask myself that question whenever I feel scared to do something. 

When I got home, I decided to not go back to UMass until the spring. I had more than enough credits. I immediately went to see my doctor and she told me to take some anti-anxiety medication. I had never even thought that was what I was going through and there was no way in HELL I was going to take that stuff. I point blank asked her if there was an immediate fix to stop the panic and she said no. By the way, the answer is yes. It's called xanax. Or anything like it would've stopped it within the hour. I called many many many people and talked for hours and hours. But I refused medication and counseling. And I wasted 5 months of my life to sitting on the couch every day and watching tv. I became nothing. I let fear control me.

I wrote this journal on August 25, 2004: "I can not explain what I am going through right now. It's absolutely terrible. Something is really wrong and I don't know what it is or how to fix it. It's like I have become a 3 year old child... I need to be around people all the time or I freak out. 

I feel like I am being suffocated and I don't know what I want to do with my life when I graduate and that scares me. I never really understood before. I feel like I am choking. It's like a million things crushing me all at once. And I can't think about them fast enough."

I basically didn't have another panic attack until one year later on August 29, 2005 when I enrolled in graduate school and freaked out about all the unanswered questions that went along with doing a master's program in 1 year and teaching full time in an inner city. I had a panic attack for 4 months straight. That is not an exaggeration. That happened. I barely slept. But I pushed through because what was my alternative? Live in my parents' basement and collect welfare? I couldn't let it get me that badly. And it ended up working out wonderfully and I met some amazing people.

It makes me regret not going to the U of A. What would I have gained from it? So I try to use that thought too whenever I feel like copping out. What will I miss by leaving this?

I still have many fears. I have learned to manage the panic and I have an emergency supply of xanax to get me through in case I can't. But mostly I avoid panic because I don't think about my fears. And I need to. Because I faced my fears before and I know how that turned out so I can face my fears now. Right? It's time to explore mentally what would happened if these things occurred. Should be interesting.

But I won't be paralyzed this time. Here is how.

I am reading a book called The Dark Side of the Light Chasers that is helping me face some of these fears and embrace the things I am scared of. Sometimes all I need is simple knowledge to overcome something. I have many fears from my parents dying to my own death or spiders and snakes so I am going to try to get over as many as possible as quickly as possible. It will make me stronger. And give me tools to overcome fears in the future.

I have to say though, I really don't want to do this. I am scared to do this. I thin I would rather be put in a tank filled with gross creatures than do this. So that's why I have to, right?

And thus starts the saga...

Of getting a middle school license. I don't necessarily want to teach middle school but I do want to be more marketable (I don't plan on leaving NHS either) so I am applying for this license. You never know where life is going to lead you and I want to make sure I have plenty of options. It's the same reason why I am applying for a NY teaching license even though I have no plans to teach there. I began that process in 2007 and haven't even finished it. Whoops.  I have heard that if you teach high school, all you need to do is apply and you automatically get it. I could not find that option when I applied so I called the DOE and they said that I took a class for my master's degree that counts (you need to take a class or a seminar) so I'll get it :) And MA gets $25 of my money. But it's worth it. 

Ironically, there is no "history" option for NY. They do "social studies" which is the opposite for Massachusetts. When I took the MA MTEL History test as a freshman in 2002, I got a 69. You need a 70 to pass. I passed the communication and literacy tests first time. When I retook the history test in 2004 as a junior I got a 70 - pathetic. However after teaching for a year and a half, when I went to take the NY exams, which are MUCH harder than MA, I got really high marks and passed them all first time around. Like MA, you can only take 2 tests at a time so I had to do 2 different sessions to get all 3 done. I even got perfect scores on some subtests. I was shocked by that. 

Annnnyways, it's all in an effort to be able to handle anything life throws my way. Wish me luck!

Catholicon

Yessss! I finally got my professional license! Took long enough.

I am so happy they counted the credits I took this year since they weren't history. That was all I was worried about. I got the 12 credits done for the cheapest amount of money you can get it in. If I had taken real graduate history classes, it would've cost roughly $5000. Since they took 3 from my undergrad (free) and since I got one 3 credit class (UNM, $378) paid for by my district, I only paid for 6 credits that were $75 each for a total of $450 and I think one had a fee of $225 so $675 total. Quite the discount. Very proud of myself. I start two classes this week. Onward to 30 credits! 

Also, the word of the day for September 29 was a synonym for my favorite word ever: panacea. I didn't know there needed to be a synonym for that. Sometimes I don't get why people make up words that have identical meanings to other words. What a waste of time and effort. 

catholicon \kuh-THOL-i-kuhn\, noun:
A universal remedy; panacea.