It occurred to me just now that my world is a better place to be when I am writing. There is a great need in me to put my thoughts down, preferably eloquently, but down in any case. When I cease to do so, a part of me goes missing, whether I choose to acknowledge it or not. So here I am, back on the Xanga account I have been thinking about simply deleting due to the fact that I barely write anything in it anymore. Tonight I miss Ohio. I miss my friends. I miss college and the rich and exciting life I lead with the friends I made in the theatre department. I miss the sense of community, the dramatic parties where each night a new set of dominoes was set up ready to fall into euphoric or catastrophic ends. I miss feeling like art was all around me, and it was all I could do but breathe it in and indulge in it. I wrote poetry, I saw and acted in ridiculous amounts of theatre. I was waist deep in all things Shakespeare. I miss London and Ireland and the raw excitement of traveling abroad. All of those things made me feel so incredibly alive. And I miss all of the casts I have ever been in and the unique comraderie and experience each one brought with it. It is so sad when a production ends, because you know you will never again have all of those people together again, and that something extremely special is disbanded forever when the show closes. It is heartbreaking every time.
And I look at my life now and compare it to then and realize there is no comparison. I live here in LA, where there is no sense of community outside of my acting studio (which I love), where I live isolated and alone, where my tendency to procrastinate has gone to a whole new level in part due to an environment that does not do a very good job of nourishing art, and that in fact reeks of failure everywhere you go, and in part because I am too afraid of failure to try, it would seem. At least, that is the best reason I can come up with to explain my inability to kick my own ass into gear. Otherwise I would just have to admit that I am a hopelessly lazy person, and I know that isn't true, because I didn't get the grades and awards I did in school by sitting on my ass. I worked really fucking hard to achieve what I did. But right now I have lost that hard working person in a dense fog, and I haven't figured out how to find him again. I hate myself for the lazy person I have become. It is pathetic and disgusting and debilitating. My life has become a succession of excuses piled on top of one another for why I haven't been proactive in advancing my career. And now I have a job that sucks so bad that I can't even cover my expenses each month. I can't keep this up, or I will go insane...and I won't have enough money to see a shrink. It's really sad how many years I have been writing about how bad my procrastination has gotten, and that something has got to change. And as much as I want to change, I somehow manage to simply get worse and fall deeper into the downward spiral. Now granted, I have made an incredible amount of progress in terms of my talent as an actor. I'm not saying I'm the greatest actor who ever lived, but I know without a shadow of a doubt that I have improved immensely, not just over the years, but month to month. I look back at the things I used to do to prepare and rehearse for a role, and I just have to laugh. I didn't have a clue what I was doing. I was groping in the dark. So that is certainly something. I have developed at least a rudimentary sort of process and a way of working and rehearsing that has opened my eyes to the wonderful world of real acting and not just playing at the idea like a child. I have developed a healthy confidence in my abilities and day by day I feel like less of a hypocrite when labeling myself as an artist...but the waiting tables part certainly slows down that process a bit. Anyway, it's late. In summary: Something's gotta give. Big time.

I was leaving CBS Radford Studios after working on Samantha Who the other night, and this guy comes up to me in the parking garage as I'm walking to my car and offers me money to jump his car. Don't you find it sad that we have been reduced to thinking that strangers will only help us out if we can do something for them in return, like giving them money? Of course I would give him a jump, and I gladly did it for free. The guy was obviously in a jam, so why wouldn't I help him out? If I were a woman, it might be wise to offer money, since the circumstance of a guy asking you to come to his car in a parking garage at night would be a bit different in that case...but I'm not a woman; I wasn't afraid of getting raped! Anyway, all I'm saying is that these are sad times we live in. If we can't even count on people to help us out when we obviously need it, how do we manage to function as a society? Isn't something more than the satisfaction of one's individual needs required for a society to progress? Or is it really true that money makes the world go round, and nothing is required beyond that? At this point, I feel like mass catastrophe and devastation is the only thing that could possibly bring people together again. Something that scares the humanity back into people.

I also have a bone to pick. This sounds like the subject of a Seinfeld episode, but here it is: The guy was very appreciative, and since I didn't want money, he offered a handshake. However, the handshake was one of those super flimsy ones where you would almost rather have not shaken the person's hand at all. I especially hate when guys give those limp noodle handshakes - it grosses me out. But my point is, if you are going to thank a man by shaking his hand, make it a nice, firm handshake that actually means something. Do not offer your hand out and then hang it there like you want it to be kissed! To me, that sort of handshake comes off as saying, "I would like to thank you, but only superficially."

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I've sunk to a new low, so read on if you dare. I've been trying to think of ways to make some extra money lately, since there is less and less background work to be had now that summer is upon us, and even when there was a lot, I was still losing lots of money. So I've started subscribing to survey websites...yeah, sadly that is all I've come up with so far. Anyway I thought people might like this one because it is one of the most highly regarded sites, and because the referral incentives are pretty cool. You get $2 (or maybe it's up to $2, I don't remember) for every single survey that one of your referrals completes, and $1 for every survey that someone they refer completes...so basically it's the whole network marketing incentive without any real commitment. Pretty much just refer people, make a little extra money, and take a survey now and then if you feel like it. The downside is that they don't seem to send you a lot of surveys, and even when they do, you may not qualify for it; but it's not like treasure trooper where you have to subscribe to free trials and then cancel them later or any of that annoying stuff. I believe you just answer survey questions, they pay you, and that is it. Plus their privacy policy is pretty solid. Anyway, if you're interested, great! Please use my referral link :)  If not, thanks for reading, and you are certainly welcome to pass along the referral page to anyone you know that is a computer junkie.

Passionately yours,
Shameless Shamerson