it’s not important to know how or why i was responsible for running northwestern university’s student theatre newsletter, but it’s important to know that i took it very seriously. i’ve taken very few things seriously in my life, but they are all connected by one fact: they were dumb
i discovered early on: if i dedicated myself to a task, i could bend reality and thwart spacetime to accomplish extremely meaningless things successfully, most often with very little benefit or reward. much more significant tasks, i had the incredible ability to ignore altogether. it’s a superpower, to perfect a college playwriting assignment while misplacing your parking tickets and consistently forgetting to vote till same-day registration.
sometimes, i subconsciously know a container in my fridge is going to grow mold. like, eventually. i check up on it every few days, knowing i won’t eat it. knowing i should throw it away. but, against all logical considerations including my ultimate will, waiting for the blissful release of discarding it only once something truly catastrophic has been created inside. this trait may lead to my demise.
as a child, i woke up at excessively early hours to accomplish tasks. these tasks were dumb. in fourth grade, i realized Ben 10 played in the mornings, and if I woke up at 5:45 AM, I could brush my teeth, watch like, one episode, see my parents and sister wake up, watch the sun rise, and go to school in the jeans i wore to go to sleep last night. it saved morning time. bliss.
next, adolescence. this morning ritual was applied to the internet. at the age of 12 or 13 i discovered that if i woke up at 5:00AM and got on my laptop instead of the TV, I could make it all the way through the posts I missed while sleeping. i perfected this practice for years, at the expense of my mental and emotional faculties. i would offer my brain to the scientists attempting to discover the impact of tumblr.com on the adolescent mind and i wouldn’t even have to be dead yet. get on in there.
high school was easy, fun, and inspiring. when i went to college, i thought i was gonna study economics and theatre, eventually do law school, and become the president or something. very soon, the econ major became a minor, which then became a business minor because it had less math. theatre became… everything. acting, writing, watching, even sending a stupid weekly newsletter to the other kids who did it.
by the end of college it was sketch comedy, screen acting, youtube, twitter, film production, standup, and i was moving to los angeles to pursue it all professionally. i have to believe a higher power intervened there, because a lower power (me) knows it wasn’t a logical, rational call. a lot of the fellow delusional kids that newsletter went out to had what now feels like unlimited money.
i let my brain run around the first 23 years fairly off-leash. i obsessed over and accomplished what i thought at the time was quite worthwhile. it was all really fun. i left high school ambitious and unhinged. i left college artistic, eccentric, and staunchly anti-capitalist. it’s been hard to obsess over the 9-5. thus, i lost two of them in 1.5 years out.
no longer under the delusion of an amazing educational environment, which i was so lucky to have my entire life, i find myself with a finite number of years to live, a bank account that reflects my logical capabilities back at myself and others, and a vision of the future that feels both real and imaginary, attainable and complete hubris. i guess there were obsessions that could bring you security, and i didn’t grab onto those early.
not to knock my obsessions. im lucky to have obsessions that bring you friendship, love, an annoying and hypocritical sense of moral righteousness, laughter, maybe even ultimate purpose, but it’s becoming increasingly obvious to me that a home is not made out of the paint on the walls, but the scaffolding in place. need me some scaffolds.
i want to choose to obsess over some lame, dependable, sustainable shit. make some CHANGES. i go on runs now. i drink coffee (i did not before). might learn about stocks n shit. however, if my track record has anything to say about it, this probably won’t go far.
i might just keep playing. i still believe it’s possible that my life could get to be an incredible delusion. that i can keep my head in the clouds, give more than i have, dye my glasses rose-colored. i think it’s possible we all can. that’s my biggest secret.
also the newsletter was called TWIST: this week in student theatre. no idea where to shove that in here