400 Days...

400 days ago, I smoked my last cigarette. Sure, every once in a while I'd love to take a long, satisfying pull off a Camel, but I'm glad I stopped.  My lungs thank me, my fingers thank me and my teeth thank me. Not to mention any number of strangers in my immediate proximity when taking public transportation.

400 days...

400 days ago, I was commencing my first day of unemployment since the age of sixteen.  I wasn't too worried, as I had a tidy severance package to fall back upon.  I could concentrate on my writing for a while before redirecting my energies to a full blown job search.

Unfortunately, it turns out the stock photo & footage business has been contracting far more than I had imagined.  And much to my regret, being in such a specialized and niche industry doesn't really translate well to others.  You can't be a butcher for twenty-five years and suddenly become a farmer because they both deal with cows. But I have hope and faith (also my two favorite strippers) that something will turn up.  I've made some financial moves that should keep me afloat for at least...another 400 days.

400 days...

400 days ago, I was waiting to hear back from my friend and future producer in Los Angeles -- to get his feedback for the first fifteen & a half pages of DO NOT DISTURB, a screenplay I had started piecing together in my spare time towards the end of 2011.  

Today, the script is winding its way through La-La Land, and amazingly enough, it's acquiring positive buzz.  Lists of directors have been submitted by a number of agencies, and meetings are continually being set up with the two men who are committed to shepherding this project all the way up to the day it unspools in movie theaters.  I never could have dreamed of the strides that have been made, of the caliber of people who have read it and genuinely want to see it produced.  

Pretty cool doesn't cut it, it's fucking awesome.

And today, I'm a couple pages into my next idea (after considering and subsequently tabling several others that I wrote notes for and then put aside).  I'm approaching this piece much in the same manner I did for DO NOT DISTURB.  I just need to focus the way I did 400 days ago.

400 days...

It's been a long and strange 400 days.  A few moments of exhilaration sprinkled here and there, but far more bleakness and soul-searching solitude than even this prematurely cranky curmudgeon would have liked.  But time marches on and life moves forward. Call me crazy, but be it unfounded or not, I have a weird sense of optimism for the next 400 days.

Yeah, I'm crazy.  It's all so crazy -- that it just might work out after all...