The Midnight Write - Issue # 5 - 09 going on 10

So where I am sitting, it is January 1st 2010. There are dates like the year 2000, for instance, that you don't really think about hitting until you do. The new millennium was suppose to be this great wide open realm of possibilities. in the 1950s, the years 2000 had flying cars and solar powered ice cream trucks, or whatever.

In 2010, some of those things do indeed exist, but they are not mainstream. I am not surprised, but yet as we are teh human race, kind of beside myself that we seem to actually be moving backward at a global community. Maybe that's just my limited view on things, but the economy is still in the red, and it will still be a few years before it gets better.

2009 for me, as a whole, was 35% suck and 65%win. Yes I was stuck on a boat alone half of the time in an area I barely knew, but i connected with longtime internet friends and made new ones. I forged lasting relationship with people I can call family. Yes, my film career at this point is non existent, but I think in all that mud I found some gems to hold on to, and to start perfecting again.

At the end of 2009, I was facing a lot of personal issues. You could say I was smack dab in the middle of a personal crisis. For too long I held onto my old dreams, which I think going to California helped me to realise what I really wanted. And when I was laid off, and relinquiesed myself back to Indiana to recoup, I was forced to look at some of the choices I have made this year, and a lot of them were made badly. My head had not been right for a long time. Those who tried to comfort me were unsuccessful, because I would not allow them to. I chose to face my problems, at first, like I always faced them - alone. I had always said, in the end, when everyone else goes home, I am still there, working away trying to make things work. And I was tired of trying, tired of hoping that all of the pieces would fall together.

Moving back to Indiana in October made me face those choices, not just the move, but the career, and the personal decisions I had made. If there was one thing that was made very clear to me, is that no matter what, things are going to happen with or without your direct involvement. There will be life. There will be death. So the choice you have to make for yourself is this - what will you chose to do when faced with what could seem to be the end?

The answer was simple, and it was the answer I didn't want to hear because it was what I hated to do the most.

I started over.

This process started when I wanted to keep myself occupied as I looked for a job. I at first wanted to make web comics, but that proved to be too time consuming. I'm not that great of an artist, and it takes me awhile to come up with a decent picture I would be proud of. I decided, after much debate, that in the end - before the film production, before the scripts, before the comics I stated in high school, I was one thing - I was a storyteller. I have stories to tell. Stories about love, loss, adventure, compassion, true evil, healing - the list goes on, and I have the time now to put them into a medium where I have no boundaries to my imagination. I decided to become a novelist.

Now don't get me wrong, novel writing has it's share of obsticals, but it can't be much worse than trying to get a script sold, or a movie made. In the end, I was tired of relying on other people to pull my projects together, but now it solely relies on me, and having help fleshing out anything for those stories is at my own discretion. I think this is my calling, although it is not entirely new, I think I had forgotten at some point what made me like film making in the first place, that I did it for the fun of it, not worrying about all the things that productions comes with, just trying to tell a entertaining story at the very least, but have some important lessons as well. I am still burnt out of the movie making, and I think it will still be a couple of years before I pick up a camera to use in that capacity again.

2009, and going into 2010, there is a lot of change coming, not only for myself, but for my family. Being an Uncle in the next few months is exciting, but it has also got me thinking about my own relationships. Most of the poeple in my "extended family" are not in indiana, a those close enough to visit still feel like a thousand miles away. I have become tired of being alone, in this capacity. Family can only do so much, and sadly in the end I cannot rely on my "extended family" alone to hook me up with someone. I have a lot of issues with women in general, as anyone who truly knows me knows I don't hide this fact. Some of those scars run deep, and may never be truly healed. But I try to push on for the sake of myself, hoping that in the end of things, I will not be alone.

2010 brings hope in a lot of ways. At least I think it does. Not only on the home front, but globally. Again, that's just my personal opinion. The capacity for good, and evil, in the human being is still astounding. yes, tomorrow the bombs could fall and we are suddenly in WWIII, fighting a nuclear war. But I believe in the good of man, of any man, and that in the end, we'll come to find that we're all the same, learning the same things from the same person, just taught slightly different. And to annihilate half the planet because they don't believe exactly what you do is not only crazy, but wrong. We can not let extreme religious believes divide us as a global people, we can not let things like color, race, sex, and ethnicity be cause for slaughter and war. I believe no one has to right to cause harm, and no one deserves to be tied to a fence, beaten, and left for dead.

I hope, I really do, that 2010 shows a vast improvement. I hope that things will get better, and I think they will. I only want to see a world of peace in the end, where fear does not exist, but perhaps that will only be a fairy tail on this world. I just hope in my time here, I can make a dent large enough to make a good change.

To those of you still reading this post, I thank you for at least taking the time to read the blog. I know I have become a bit more extreme in my posts as of late, but don't expect any changes anytime soon. Living/breathing fiction writing sometimes can be suffocating, and here is where I release my real life thought upon the world, perhaps for those only here to read. I may never be a Chomsky, a Tolkien, or even Vonnegut, I just hope someone is inspired to do right by the world, by the human race, and does not give up with life seems to beat you down.

Get up, and keep moving forward. Because, that is life. And we as sentient beings, need to live it.