June 11th, 2001.  Monday

 

    Ah, the mid-afternoon update.  How nice to have the time to just sit here and write.

    Unfortunately, I don't really have the time.  Which pretty much explains why I'm doing this and ignoring everything that's giving me an ulcer right now.  At the very least, I should be taking a nap if I'm not going to be doing my work.  Basically, the whole thing started at my Kaplan training class yesterday.  "Disaster" isn't quite appropriate, but it's close.  I thought i'd prepared enough, over-prepared, really.  I thought, I know the stuff, I'll just go in and do it.  It worked on my audition.  But that was a little different this week, because I didn't really know the stuff I was supposed to know.  So I had to present an overview and a discrete lesson.  The overview wasn't all that shabby, for a first try.  And I had to go first too, so that bought me a little slack.  But then the discrete one, where I had to do a problem, I just floundered.  I started out ok, then got totally lost.  The way I had prepared, I was ready to go from start to finish in one lesson.  but she had me start from the middle, so I wasn't sure how to make it flow or what I was already supposed to have covered.  so basically, I was fucked.  Like I said, it started ok, then after about 40 seconds, the decline in the presentation was almost astoundingly sudden.  I couldn't even tell which fraction was bigger than the other, which was the whole problem.  So then I just gave up and said, sorry, I'm lost.  She said it was fine, it happens, and that's why you have to make sure to prepare the lessons carefully before each class.  Bascially, the whole thing has shaken my confidence.  I don't want to go to the next class.  I don't want to teach their classes.  I just want to forget the whole sorry affair.  And this morning, I decided I'd quit.  I have too much going on right now.  There's no way I can do it all.  But then I decided, fuck it, I'm going to do it.  It could be potentially humiliating, but  I know if I don't go back on Wednesday, I'll regret it.  Not because I quit, but because I quit out of fear.  I can justify it any way want, in several ways.  But when it comes down to it, I'll always know in my heart that I was just afraid to go back because I was too lazy to put in the work and do it right.  I didn't even practice my lesson outloud for yesterday's class.  I can you possibly give a speech without running through it at least once?  I never would've done that before.  So I know that if I don't go back, it'll just start me on that slippery slope.  So I gotta stop it right here.  Things have been looking up lately, and this is exactly the sort of setback that i know will send me tumbling again.  It's the quitting thing.  It gets to me, and I hate when I give up because I'm just afraid.  I know it's just a stupid class, but you gotta know your rallying points when they present themselves.  If this we the movie "Defending Your Life,"  this would be a crucial scene to look at.  I know there's a good chance I'll go in and just stink up the joint, but I'm going to keep getting up there and take it.  Of course, now that I think about it, I don't really know which feeling would be worse.  The feeling that I never made it because I quit and never even tried, or the feeling I'd get from trying, sucking, and being told I wasn't good enough.  At least the quitting thing is a little more familiar than the rejection thing.

Says the guy who hasn't heard a peep back from the score of resumes he's mailed out.
 
 

    Also had my writing class today.  One of the people i didn't like wasn't there, but two of the people I thought had potential didn't show up either.  I brought in something to read, and it was fairly well received.  Though the professor called it "slight."  Which it was.  I mean, it was in response to an assignment he gave us that I wrote in 20 minutes.  Not a bad return on my investment of time I'd say.  Anyway, some woman read four single-spaced pages of her futuristic science fiction novel.  Set in the year 13,000 something, it featured a half black, half Aryan woman, whose mother travelled back in time to pre-WWII Germany and was impregnated by a German man before travelling back to her time.  Time travel is very common in 13,000.  You just get on the number 3 bus.  Anyway, it went on and on.  And on.  And on.  Four pages about the woman, who wears a "Jewish Star" around her neck.  I don't know why she didn't say star of david, but that's neither here nor there.  Of course, the only place this woman ever travelled to was New York of October 2000.  This time, she took the bus driver's advice and went somewhere different:  New York of May, 2001.  This all makes good fodder for my prospective book.  Though I'm honestly really trying to get something out of this class that's close to the actual intent of the course.  But man, it's tough.  There are some good writers, but in general the structure of the class doesn't really help anyone.  The prof asked me what I liked to write about, telling me I definitely had "the facilities" and a good command of dialogue.  I said I didn't really have any ideas, that that's why I was in the class- 'cause I think I can write, I just don't know what about.  He suggested maybe something quasi-fictional, like writing as a 16 year old boy.  I could explore frustration, parents that just don't seem to understand, etc.  He said "You should try to write outside yourself, not just about you."  So I said "Then I probably shouldn't write as a frustrated 16 year-old."  I smiled, hoping people would laugh.  No one did.

    Anyway, for my own reference, cause sometimes I check up on my past self, here's what i did with my weekend:
Friday- Left work, came home, watched the basketball game, went to Great Lakes with Matt.
Saturday-  Tried to prepare for my Kaplan class, went to the gym, then went to a party at my friend Laurences apartment in Williamsburg.  She's a french girl I know from NYU.  I always enjoy parties at her place.  She has the most "new york" apartment I've ever seen.  It's a huge loft space, with all this crap in the dark, makeshift hallways. Matt said the only thing it was missing was one of those big, industrial elevators that you have to pull shut from the top.  But then we discovered that she had that too.   So that pretty much completed it.  Plus, those Europeans always put out a good spread.  Prosciutto, salmon, quiche, various olives and peppers and dips.  And good beer.  My parties usually feature a 12-pack of something ok, and cans of Bud.  And a bag of chips and salsa, if you're lucky.  Sometimes I think I didn't invite laurence to my last party purely out of shame.  Anyway, after that, Matt and I met up with Jed, Dylan, and James at a bar down the road in Williamsburg.  We spent most of the remainder of the evening playing this bowling game they had.  Lotsa fun.  And relatively cheap entertainment, which is what we're looking for these days.
The stalling is now done.

DA&R home
Past Aggravations and Regrets
previous| next
South Pole Home

©2001 Three Match Breeze