The Art of Worldly Wisdom: 10

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If the ninth maxim Baltasar Gracian put forth is one of my favorites, the tenth gives me chills.  Not in an elated way but in a fearful way.  The tenth maxim speaks of the two things I seek and want the most, fortune and fame.  One of the reasons why I like Baltasar Gracian is he does have a sense of pragmatism.  Where some philosophers would encourage a person to shun fame and to not see fortune as a life goal.

x Fortune and Fame.

Where the one is fickle the other is enduring. The first for life, the second afterwards; the one against envy, the other against oblivion. Fortune is desired, at times assisted: fame is earned. The desire for fame springs from man’s best part. It was and is the sister of the giants; it always goes to extremes—horrible monsters or brilliant prodigies.

Fame is fickle. Andy Warhol said everyone would have 15 minutes of fame. The movie We Live in Public points to the fact that the desire for fame can drive people to go to crazy lengths for fame. The internet truly changed the concept of what fame is best described by this t-shirt.

Just because the nature of fame has changed does not mean Gracian’s advice regarding fame is not valid.  Fame, according to Gracian, stems not from a sense of pride but a sense of greatness, of strength and power.

Fortune, Baltazar says, is something that can be nurtured.  The collection of fortune can even be turned over to others, but fame requires constant effort.  Fortune will grow to a point where it will become self sustaining.  Fame is never self sustaining.  It fades if not maintained.

So why would anyone seek fame?  Fortune is obvious, fortune makes life easier.  Fame?  Well, fame is a form of immortality.  Most people will have children to carry their memory and name into the future.  Some will only have their fame.   That reminds me of this story I recently listened to called Mr. Penumbra’s Twenty-Four-Hour Bookstore which talks about this special kind of immortality.  Talks about it in speculative fiction terms so it turns out to be real immortality instead of just a transference of memory forward into the future, but that is the nature of such things.

The Art of Worldly Wisdom

Maxim 1 – Maxim 2 – Maxim 3 – Maxim 4 – Maxim 5 – Maxim 6– Maxim 7– Maxim 8– Maxim 9

Three Lessons From an Afternoon of Moviemaking

A week ago, several friends of mine and I got together to make short movies.  We really didn’t expect to get much done because when we get together we don’t tend to be very focused.  Yet, we all really wanted to get some things accomplished.

We had only one complete script and two ‘improv’ type projects and surprisingly in the short period of time we had set aside for this, we did get everything done.  I had done a previous filming project that took twice as long and accomplished a lot less.  I tried to determine what was different between the two projects.  Why was one so much more productive than the other?  Here is what I came up with and I think these elements can be applied to any multi-person project.

1. Know when to lead.

When everyone is there to participate and help, someone needs to guide that help and participation.  This isn’t about one person ‘being in charge’ as this role can pass from person to person, but at any given point, one person needs to know what is going on, taking the input from the group and enacting it.  My first film project I was too timid, expecting people to intuit the needs of the project and fall into line.  That was unrealistic and was a waste of their time.  This second time around, we had people take charge, no hemming and hawing.

2. Know the tools

When dealing with any project that has a technical component, during the actual project is not the time to experiment and learn the tech.  The first time I did filming, I had a camera that I had used quite a bit but wasn’t familiar with how it operated in lower light situations.  I spent more time messing with lighting and camera settings than I should have.  The second time around I had extensively used the camera in all sorts of lighting situations, I was quite familiar with the camera settings, and only screwed up one scene because I had it set incorrectly.

3. Know the people.

In every project you will be dealing with people who have a variety of skills and talents. It is important and beneficial to at least have a strong idea of what these skills and talents are before you begin the project.  Knowing the limitations is critical.  In my first movie making project, I had a volunteer actress who didn’t want to swear or fill her mouth with blood (it was a vampire movie after all).  This definitely had an impact on one of the crucial scenes.  Not awful but I suddenly was rewriting and fiddling with story bits when I needed to be focusing on the technical aspects of filming.  In the second attempt we knew what everyone was willing to do well before the filming.

It all breaks down to not being wary of taking charge.  Taking charge does not mean becoming a dictator but being the one who knows what everyone is trying to accomplish and then moving forward with the ideas.  Too often people are just waiting for others to take action.  A lot of time can be wasted trying to get everyone to move in the same direction spontaneously.  A simple “Okay, let’s shoot the next scene” was all it took to get the group in action.

Equipment is always going to be quirky and playing with it can take a lot of time.  When you have people waiting, people who could be doing something else, that is not the time to start messing around with settings and variations you’ve never played with before.  People can  assume nothing is going to get done and stop caring about the project.  When they stop caring, trying to motivate them become more difficult.

Everybody is different and that is a good thing.  Understanding the diverse elements of the people you are working with can come in quite handy.  One of my friends works in theater and has extensive experience on stage production and just knows how things should work.  Her advice improves the production.  I know other people who are just plain shy in front of a camera so trying to force them into the spotlight is simply cruel.

The Old Woods

The smoke from the forest fires made beautiful sunsets.  Wes marveled at the intense oranges and reds as he reached into his small sweaty Coleman cooler and pulled out an Olympia beer and popped the tab.  He shifted in the beat up lawnchair, held together with a judicious application of duct tape. The pain in his back spiked and he grimaced.  Two years ago Wes suffered a traumatic back injury while working on a loading dock.  On his first day he was shown a video on safety.  A man dressed in an official lab coat placed a jelly doughnut between two bricks to demonstrate how the spinal column worked.

When he turned to pick up a thirty pound case of yams, his jelly doughnut spurted jam and Wes got a disability check.  Now he sat on his porch, drank beer, popped pain pills and listened to his neighbors in the trailer park argue.  His next door neighbors, Tina and Fred Hill were the worst.  Every night right before Fred left to work his job at the convenience store Tina picked a fight.  She accused Fred of sleeping with Paula, the incredibly cute college girl who also worked the night shift at the store.  A brilliant bit of hubris on Tina’s part.  Fred Hill, fat and balding, barely able to keep his light bill paid, driving a piece of rusted metal he called a car, as charming as a dead skunk on the road, would never be able to get in the pants of Paula.  The fact Tina felt it was possible must have been her way of thinking she had a man worth holding onto.  Or something.  Wes didn’t think too much about it.  At least he liked to tell himself he didn’t think too much about it.  But he did.  Two years sitting on his tiny porch watching the people come and go was all the entertainment he had.

He thought about everyone in the trailer park.  He wondered why they did the things they did, what decisions did they make to land them here, with him, at the shitty end of the stick.  Wes had the time since his injury.  Once, he was a loader, a guy who drove a forklift at a warehouse.  Now, he was a borderline drunk with tens of thousands of dollars worth of medical bills and a monthly stipend from an insurance company.  Every day blended into the next with a mixture of pain pills, beer, Wheel of Fortune, and grilled cheese sandwiches.  Sitting on the four foot by six foot slab of wood he called a porch let him keep in touch with the world around him at least a little.

Fred slammed the frail screen door behind him as he fled his nightly fight with Tina.  He stopped at his gray and rusty 1994 Ford Escort and gave an anemic wave to Wes.  “How’s the back today, Wes?”

“Hurts like a son of a bitch.  How’s the wife today?” Wes asked.

“Yelling like a bitch.  Take care of yourself, now,” Fred said as he ducked into his car and started it up.  It finally turned over on the third try and Fred sputtered down the road.  Just the mention of pain caused Wes to crave another pill.  He was warned about the addictiveness of them so he really tried to work through the pain, doing the stupid breathing his physical therapist told him to do.  It never reduced the pain, it only made him feel like an ass.  The pills worked much better, and quicker.

The following night he found himself in the same chair, drinking another beer, swinging a fly swatter at the houseflies.  So many houseflies.  Wes couldn’t remember there ever being so many houseflies.  Some dogs must have gotten into the trashcans and spread rotting garbage around.  He held his hand over the top of his beer can to keep the flies away.  As he sat there, he felt odd.  He adjusted himself in the rickety lawnchair and took another sip from his can.  He flicked the fly swatter about a few more times finally whacking it against the railing of his porch killing several flies at once.  He glanced up by his door where a Ziploc bag of water hung in a folksy attempt to scare away the flies.  Wes didn’t know how it worked, only that it usually did.  On this day, it failed.

Something else was odd. There was silence.  Wes looked down at his watch and realized it was past 8:30. Fred’s piece of shit car still sat in front of the Hill’s trailer.  There wasn’t any fighting, only silence, except for the constant buzzing of flies.  Wes wasn’t the meddling sort of man, but he had grown so accustomed to the pattern of the day he didn’t feel right when it wasn’t flowing as he expected.  The flies were so bad they finally drove him out of his seat.  The steps were the worst.  He knew each time he bent down, it would feel like a dagger cutting into his spine: four steps leading down from his wooden porch to the cement walk, four daggers stabbing into his spine.  The pain pills he took numbed the pain so much that apart from those moments of stabbing excruciating pain, Wes felt nothing.

He carefully walked over past Fred’s car to the short walk leading to Fred’s trailer.  Wes stopped and debated his action.  Stopping gave the flies something to land on and they swarmed him, covering his bare arms, crawling on his neck. He waved his arm about and made his way to their trailer.  He lifted his arm to knock on the door and he realized the screen door had been torn away and the door to the trailer was ajar.  Fred must have torn the screen door off its hinges when he got home in the morning.  There must have been more fighting.

Wes pushed the door open slowly.  “Fred?  Tina?  Is everything okay?”

Sprawled on the floor was Wes.  His skull had been cracked open, soft grayish pink brains leaked from the skull.  A thick heavy cast iron skillet covered in blood rest near his prone lifeless body.  Flies buzzed all around the body, laying eggs in the dead tissue.  Wes felt himself growing faint and weak in the knees.  His stomach and brain both rebelled against the grotesque scene in front of him.  He stumbled back, walking as quickly as he could, ignoring the stabbing pain in his back, climbing the four steps to his trailer faster than he ever had since his accident.  He grabbed the cordless phone and called 911.

“911. What’s your emergency?”

“Hello, I’m at Deep Canyon Courts and my neighbor is dead, I just saw my neighbor Fred dead in his home.  His head… smashed…”

“I’m dispatching units now, sir.  Calm down, please.  Help will be there shortly.  Is there anything else you can tell me?  Was there anyone else there?”

“I think his wife killed him!”

Wes could feel the hysteria come over him.  He started to hyperventilate.  The world went gray then black.

Continue reading “The Old Woods”

Defending My Life – Epilogue of Facing My Fears

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I had hoped when I started the Defending My Life series that I would be able to have it culminate in some wonderful moment, a reveal, that would be cathartic and symbolic.  If I were truly a smart person, I would have timed it to lead right up to my 20th high school reunion.  I did not, but the reunion did occur recently and I found myself faced with a whole catalog of issues that are a direct result of my general ‘fearfulness of life’.  Some of these were met with success and some with failure.

Going to the reunion itself was a moment of conquering fear.  Would anyone remember me?  Would anyone want to talk to me?  Would it be a scene from Carrie where I get up on the stage in my prom dress and pig’s blood… wait, no that wasn’t even close to being a possibility.  Of all the nightmare scenarios that raced through my head, it turned out to be a brilliant and wonderful experience with two critical life lessons that I felt I needed to share.

A Tale of Four Women

In my early years, I had four main crushes that extended from roughly 4th grade to my senior year.  In each instance, I handled my attraction poorly, not that I think many people in that age range handle any relationship with any notable skill.  In two of the cases, I never made my attraction known, mooning over them from afar.  This involved my crush in 7th grade and my crush in my senior year.  In both instances, I merely hoped that my presence would be enough to garner the attention I desired.  Not surprisingly, merely being present and available is not really a quality that reaches high on many people’s list of traits they are looking for in someone to date.  Don’t get me wrong, they are important traits, but I’ve known many relationships that lacked one of those two elements, sometimes both.  Long distance affairs have been known to occur.

In the third case, a crush I had in 8th grade and 9th grade, I failed at directness.  This was a crush that was passed anonymous notes and suffered my general sappiness.  It was pathetic on so many levels.  I never put myself in a position of being rejected which means I never put myself in a position to be accepted.

The fourth case is even worse.  The fourth case was tied to fear of direct rejection.  My sophomore and junior year the girl I had a crush on truly suffered my attention.   Young, stupid, and hormonal I deliberately ignored the signs of disinterest.  I confused passionate disgust with flirtation.  The list of what I did wrong is so long, not really sordid, but shameful to say the least.  I was the poster child for ‘Needing A Clue’.

Now ideally this bit of writing would lead into some form of climactic account of how I confessed my interest to these women or apologized where appropriate.  That did not happen.  I was not interested in having any sort of showdown at the reunion.  I was delightfully surprised to see each of these women there and had an opportunity to have a conversation with each of them.  Nothing grand or dramatic, just nice normal conversations.  If there is a lesson from all of this, it is not to dwell on the past.  I wasted a lot of time contemplating the what if’s of these crushes… what if I was more direct, what if I did confess my interest, what if I wasn’t such a creepy jerk… but that accomplished nothing.  Feelings of regret and shame might not be as bad as fear, but are equally as pointless.  Yes, in the one case an apology was most likely in order, but I had to consider, was I apologizing to heal a wound I caused or would it be an attempt to assuage my own guilt?  She had moved on and so had I.  An apology would have been mindless drama.

Who is the Jerk?

A new theme I am discovering and will explore in other writings is the concept of the Second Chance.  Everybody deserves a second, third, fourth chance.  You get the picture.   Something I realized at the reunion was the late John Hughes was right in The Breakfast Club, no one has a great high school life.  Everyone is the outsider in some way, dealing with pressures and issues no one else can fully understand.   I had my negative moments in high school just like everyone else.  Coming to the reunion led me to ask this question of myself:  Between two people:  a fifteen-year-old kid who engaged in playground shenanigans or a thirty-eight-year-old man who judged someone based on an action taken twenty plus years ago, who is the jerk?

We all walk a twisted path through life, have done things that cause us shame, regret not doing other things, and in general are good people just trying to do good things for ourselves, our loved ones, and our communities.  We have our moments of failure, our moments when we step off the path.  For such minor transgressions against each other, should we be condemned for life or do we deserve a second chance, third chance, or more?  I don’t think so.  I know I don’t want my past transgressions to be held against me forever.

I don’t mean for this to sound so saccharine.  Blame the endorphins that are still flooding my brain from such a wonderfully positive experience I had.  The world is currently very rosy to me.

Defending My Life – The Ninth (but not last) Day of Facing My Fears

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If we listened to our intellect, we’d never have a love affair. We’d never have a friendship. We’d never go into business, because we’d be too cynical. Well, that’s nonsense. You’ve got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down. – Annie Dillard

Day Nine: Practicing what I preach

The ninth day and I honestly thought it was going to be a failure in that no obstacles were presenting themselves.  I was going to try to make this a pure work fear related post and talk about how my social anxiety affects my job and doing something to symbolize my effort to conquer it.  The thing is, with my job, I’m forced to face my social anxiety day in and day out.  The phone rings and it is my job to pick it up.  I have to talk to strangers all the time.  If I try to avoid something, it hunts me down and and forces me to pay attention to it.

My poor coworkers do have to put up with my whining and complaining.  My boss knows anytime she asks me to do something, it isn’t going to be a simple thing.  She knows I’ll do it, but I’m going to mull it over, examine it, and question it first.  It really is just my way of getting comfortable with the idea.

Faced with this reality I didn’t think I’d really get to face down a fear today and what a low note that would have been to go out on.  I should have planned for a big reveal climax to give this whole series of blog posts some pop and sizzle.   At 1:36pm today, I got a chance to put all my talk into action.  For the past eight days, I’ve been in control of which fears and anxieties I got to face down.  I even had the option during all of this to opt out, and just not face them.  When I pulled into the gas station today and realized I didn’t have my wallet, I felt disaster looming.  I raced back to the office in hopes that I put my wallet on my desk (for whatever reason, it would have been odd since I don’t ever do that).  It wasn’t there.

This sort of ‘minor incident’ can usually send me in a complete panic.  Several things were stacking up against me (or at least my imagination was stacking these things up against me).  My phone battery died and I was running low on gas.  Now come with me as I give you a tour of my dark, awful imagination.  The scenario running through my head went something along the lines of… I run out of gas on the expressway.  I can’t call AAA because my phone is dead.  Highway patrol stops to see what the problem is since they don’t like cars sitting on the side of the expressway.  I’m asked for my license and registration.  I don’t have my license since it is in my wallet.  The only proof of insurance in my car is the temporary one I got when the original cards didn’t arrive.  I’m suddenly slapped with all sorts of tickets and fines and who knows what else (because it is a non-transparent bureaucratic system) and this one incident blows all the financial planning I’ve been organizing the past week out of the water.  Meanwhile my wallet was picked up by someone, my corporate charge card gets used for unsavory items and it results in my getting fired.

That entire scenario played out between my leaving the gas station and arriving at the office.  My imagination loves to go to extremes.  I could feel my heart just pumping away.  I wanted to ask for the rest of the day off so I could just verify my wallet was at home.  I stood at my desk for several minutes, I’m certain my coworkers thought I was truly crazy.  I went through the motion of telling myself to SHUT THE FRAK UP.  One – my car has enough gas to get me home, guaranteed.  Two – I’ve only been pulled over three times, never issued a ticket, why would I suddenly get pulled over today.  Three – even if I did, the temporary proof of insurance is valid, and the fine for driving without a license is something I’d deal with if it came up and there was no reason to get myself worked up over it at that moment since there wasn’t anything I could do about it.  Four – if I was truly in dire straights, a coworker offered to lend me money for gas, I have a friend who works not but two miles away from me and another who works about four miles away – both of whom would have lent me money or given me a ride home.

Instead of letting my imagination blow minor problems into monstrous catastrophes, I need to turn it to good, to solving the problems.  There are always solutions.

Today also forced me to keep in mind that I have a lot of work to do to deal with my fears and social anxiety.  Obstacles and problems arise all the time and if I let each one become a stumbling block, I won’t make much progress towards any goal.  The fear of being labeled a loser can only come true if I accept defeat and never try again.  I’m not so deluded as to claim I’ll ever be a champion at life, but I can say that I’m still plugging along.

Since this is the final post in this series, I want to take a moment to distinguish my social anxiety, which is mostly caused by my own mental make up, and the social anxiety that is caused through neurochemistry.  I am a victim of my own laziness and irrationality, while many people are victims of their chemistry.  I do not want anything I’ve written or done to be construed that there is never a need for medicine and professional help.  I’m also not saying that I am not in need of professional help, myself.  That is on my ‘big fear’ list that I’m ramping up to doing.  I’ve been given contact information for a therapist whom I will be contacting once I do reach that level of courage.  I encourage anyone who feels weighed down by their fears and anxiety to seek out similar professional help as soon as they can.

After school specials have nothing on me, right?  Just like those after school specials, if you’d like to know more about social anxiety and social phobias, here is a link to a list of articles and books on the subject.  http://www.socialphobia.org/

I really want to thank those of you who have suffered through reading all nine days of updates and thank all of you for words of encouragement and support.  Finishing this series of posts represents another accomplishment, another achievement of fnishing something I started.  This is a trend I’d like to continue.  I was hoping I’d have a killer ‘wow’ moment over these nine days, but I think overall this is a more realistic and acceptable turn of events.  There are no sudden fixes to years of insular thought and living.  There is only the day by day slog to keep moving forward.

Defending My Life – Day Eight of Facing My Fears

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A thousand fearful images and dire suggestions glance along the mind when it is moody and discontented with itself. Command them to stand and show themselves, and you presently assert the power of reason over imagination. -Sir Walter Scott

Day Eight: Putting skin in the game

Teetering on the edge of finishing this little project.  Nine days are flying by and has made me aware of just how far I really have to go.  Knocking a few bricks out of the wall of my social anxiety has been difficult but is really only symbolic of the things I need to do on a daily basis.  I’m not writing a summary just yet, but as I come to the close, I can’t help but ruminate upon the issues that vex me.

I sort of had day eight already planned out on what I needed to accomplish.  I’ve had a short story that I should have finished a month ago but kept finding reasons not to.   I was suffering the exact thing that Ira Glass is talking about in this video.

In my mind, the story was going to be fantastic and multi-layered, deep and properly plotted with great creepiness.  It was going to be something that would knock the socks off of the people who enjoy good horror stories.  As I wrote on it, each sentence was an indicator that it was going to fall short.  I loved the idea of the story so much that part of me was trying to tuck it away and write it another day, a day when I was better.  If you try, there is a chance you might fail, and failing is bad.  We should fear failure, right? Wrong.  Failure is natural, failure is good, failure is progress.  I submitted a flash fiction piece to a crappy little magazine no one heard of and it got rejected.  Along with the rejection was a critique of my use of dialog and speech patterns.  That was something I could cling to as an element to try to improve.  Failure allows for evolution of skill.

The eighth day I set out to finish that story, knowing it was going to fall short.  When I posted that I completed it a friend offered to do a gentle edit.  I initially balked.  I figured I’d just post the story to the blog and call it done and move on.  I mean having someone else read it and possibly suggest alterations… dare I say it was frightening?  No, it wasn’t frightening, it was just uncomfortable.  What if he suggests changes that dramatically improve it?  What does that say about me?  Why didn’t I know to implement the changes he suggested?  Bloody angst.

I released it.  I just went with the flow.  I realize how hard it is to actually read someone else’s work, someone you know, and try to suggest improvements, point to areas that need to be clarified, to assist with the pacing of events.  At times I know my word choices aren’t correct, or tend to be overdramatic.  (Me?! Overdramatic?! Never!!)  His offer to take this on and do even a gentle edit is an onus and one I know he is doing to help me improve.

I also set aside to day to focus on another area that needs improvement.  Financial improvement.  Now I know what I am about to say is going to get all the financial gurus up in arms but I took out a large loan against my 401k.  My job has profit sharing which is sizable but it goes right into the 401k.  I never actually get any lump sum cash in pocket from my job, so I don’t have the opportunity to catch up on anything.  And due to tax problems from my last job in regards to my severance package, the IRS has collected my past two tax returns.  Taking money from my 401k will let me pay off two small stupid debts (old credit card and Dell who is now charging me usury rates on a small sum of money and it is pissing me off), address a bigger debt, and catch up on my utilities.  It will resolve a lot of anxiety I have over general stuff in my life and help get my budgeting back on track.

Doing anything with money gives me clammy hands.  I hated my jobs where I handled money.  I’ve worked at a credit union and in payroll.  In my mind money is just numbers and it should be simple and straightforward, just like numbers.  But money also has emotion tied to it.  Money has greater meaning than just the sum.  Money is used to indicate success.  Money is used to open doors and create options.  I’ve always had a poor relationship with money and I know it is partially due to my fear of being honest about how I use it.  I’m not a squanderer, I’m just not a saver.

I know taking the 401k loan seems like more ‘anti-saving’ behavior from me, but I’m looking at it as taking money I have, putting it towards debts, and then paying myself back.  I’m not really creating another debt (even though technically I am).  Now part of this, the follow up to dealing with this part, will be the phone calls I need to make to get pay off amounts and get that sorted out.  Since the loan won’t be processed within two days, I won’t be able to count these calls as more fears conquered.  It will be the follow through though, to see if I am actually applying the lessons I’ve learned from this project.

Again, I’ve gotten some great feedback from readers, giving me a lot of positive encouragement.  It really is appreciated.  The fact you are reading the updates to this personal project is exciting to me.  I may be a misanthropic recluse hermit philosopher, but I do enjoy an audience.  Seeing that people are reading has made me hope that it isn’t just the diary aspect that keeps people reading but hopefully there is some element of this that makes the reader consider the fears in his or her life that may actually be obstacles to achieving valued goals.