busy.doing.nothing

san francisco inspires me

Jim — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 07:21:33 +0000

Back in Michigan from San Francisco. Coming down from this high is always difficult. At the same time, I’m still inspired and motivated to do something bigger with my life, something more than I have been doing. I’m very grateful for that boost, because now seems like a very active and creative point in my life. My film crew is getting together, I just finished in the Top 4 in a standup comedy competition, I’m making music in a band, I’m making friends, and I still have a few prospective projects around the corner. This is big for me. This is something I’ve needed for a long time.

Ultimately I need to just be, to keep up with things and to go with the flow. I need to be myself, be confident in my abilities. I can be impressed and inspired by others but I shouldn’t want to be them. When I create anything, I create it in my own light, and that’s the way any artist should work. I’m not here on this earth to follow in other people’s footsteps; I’m here to create my own path.

Mark Ridley

Jim — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 15:28:58 +0000

I performed a pretty solid set Wednesday night at Mark Ridley’s Comedy Castle in Royal Oak, and for the first time, I met Mark Ridley. He stopped me as I was walking back to my seat. I didn’t recognize who he was at first, because I had only seen older pictures of him. The exchange went something like this:

“Jim?” extends hand

“Yeah.” shakes hand

“Mark Ridley.”

shakes hand even harder “Oh man, hey, it’s nice to meet you. Thank you for having me.”

“You did a good job. You have a great voice.”

beaming “Thank you so much, I’m glad you liked it. I hope to see you again soon!”

“You will.”

That’s the boost of confidence I needed. My creative juices have been coming up dry and I’ve been really down on myself lately, but hearing that from Mark Ridley really gave me a push in the right direction.

New look!

Jim — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 03:14:08 +0000

I finally found a new theme that I really dig. I’ve been trying to find something that looks like a notebook to remind me of the olden days of writing in a notebook. Chances are I won’t blog more often, though, but I figure I can at least collect dust in style.

Death.

Jim — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 05:45:37 +0000

It seems like people think you’re crazy for talking about death, but as one of my former English professors who I greatly admired once said, the easiest way to dismiss someone in an argument or a debate is to call them crazy.

On The Road gave me an optimistic reminder. I’m gonna die some day, and so are you. How often do you think about that when you’re afraid of doing something, or when you decide to sit around and do nothing, or when you’re looking at the world like it’s some big huge scary mess?

Death puts all your bullshit day-to-day waste of time troubles into perspective. Why is it pessimistic to think that every day is one day closer to death? I think that’s a very optimistic way to look at life, because it reminds you all the more to make something of that day. It’s a reminder to make every day the greatest day. Can you get any more optimistic than that?

The Creative Process

Jim — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 07:20:51 +0000

When pursuing a creative venture, be it painting, music, comedy, whatever, you’re entering into an dark cave of the unknown, and the only thing lighting your way is this desire in your heart to bring something beautiful into the world. Most people, myself especially, walk in fear. You stumble as you walk, tripping and falling, running into rocks hidden in the shadows. You stop in your tracks and ponder going further, you turn around and begin to walk quickly back to the entrance of the cave before something stops you and forces you to turn back. You may do this several times before you hit a point in that cave where you notice a single, tiny ray of light at the other end. Your careful steps become a relaxed stride as you move forward, the light seemingly becoming brighter, and the brighter it gets, the quicker your stride becomes.

Dashing towards the end of the cave, you find that it is no longer dark, that it is as if you’re venturing through a sunny green field, the bright yellow sun radiating above, the sound of movement surrounding you. Before you know, you are no longer in the cave, and you are not surrounded by the sunlight, but from the light emanating from your creation. The energy from the light sends you forth into another dark cave, but this time, with far more light and a much more confident stride than before.

The Hopefulist Manifesto

Jim — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 06:32:41 +0000

I am a hopefulist: I’m not pessimistic enough to be a realist, I’m not ignorant enough to be an idealist, and I’m not impractical enough to be a dreamer. I am driven by the hope that observing and exposing reality as I perceive it will allow me and others around me to work practically towards a more ideal reality. The key to my effectiveness as a hopefulist is my perception. If my perception is skewed, then my reason will not appeal to the minds of my audience and spark emotion in their hearts, and all will be for naught. But I do believe in my mind and feel in my heart that I am on the right path, for otherwise I would not commit my thoughts in writing. I can only hope, after all.

On Lies, and Lives We Never Live

Jim — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 05:55:59 +0000

We are raised on lies. We are told that we can be anything and do anything we set our minds to. We are constantly rewarded and positively reinforced. We are told that we are special. We always win, as we’re sheltered from failure. We are never taught to reward ourselves, our spiritual, intellectual selves, our being. We grow up and learn the hard truth about the world we live in. Those who cannot handle it either escape the world through various outlets to feel that reward, that childhood sense of gratification, or they check themselves out completely.

Our current paranoia-driven overprotection and over-management of our future generations is setting them up for a life of failure and disappointment. This trend has worsened with each generation leading up to ours, as we’ve moved further away from blue collar manual labor, where we stretch our will to its limits and act out of self-preservation, and into white collar office buildings and cookie-cutter suburban homes, where we barricade ourselves in giant boxes of wood and brick and glass, sheltering and protecting ourselves from reality. Confined to these living, breathing coffins, we become increasingly paranoid, neurotic, anxious, and depressed. We mask these problems with pills, pills that the manufacturers don’t know the full gamut of their effects, good or bad, pills that our ancestors probably never needed and probably never wished for.

Unlike our ancestors, we don’t know what it’s like to push ourselves to our limits, to come close to death, to fully experience life. The closest we ever come in this manufactured world is when we drink ourselves into oblivion, when our hearts are broken seemingly beyond repair, when we wake up on the bathroom floor the morning after mixing alcohol and pills in the quest to feel something. We try to get a taste of life by running away from it.

Our willingness to barricade ourselves into this plastic-wrapped world of paranoia is driven by one of the greatest of all fears: death. When we, at the same time, are terrified by the unknown, how could we possibly be afraid of the one thing that we know is certain? There is one explanation that I believe to be true, and that is, those who fear death are only afraid because they have not yet lived. The difference between those who are driven by self-preservation and those driven by fear of death is that the former act to protect the life they already posses, and the latter act to delay the inevitable in order to find a life worth preserving. The tragedy is, those who run away in fear run into a darkness more aphotic than death, where they will never find the life they were looking for.

Uncle Tim

Jim — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 21:18:50 +0000

Rest in Peace, Uncle Tim, free from hospital beds and tubes and sickness. Today, and every day following, I will live a little bit more just for you, for your life was cut far too short.

Love,
Your nephew Jim

Wanna be in a film?

Jim — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 08:36:14 +0000

Not that kinda film. Do you act? Do you know someone who can act? Are you willing to work for free (but really, who can put a price on experience)? Can you not act but would like to do some background work? Read on…

A friend and I are working on a film project. We’re looking for actors and actresses who are interested in auditioning for the various roles in the film (which consists of about four main characters and a few minor characters with speaking parts). Auditions will be held on Saturday and Sunday, August 18th and 19th. Time and location are to follow.

It’ll be a good time. We’re all new to this, so it should at least be fun. The script will be completed this Friday and will be available to read. Drop me a line if you’re interested, and/or pass this along to anyone you know who may be.

Welcome to August

Jim — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 08:35:10 +0000

August is beginning to shape up to be quite a busy month for me, which is pretty rare considering my sedentary lifestyle (not to mention, you know, my site name). I actually have things going on in my life. What kinds of things, you ask?

Move into the house I’m renting (FINALLY)
Finish the script for the film project my friend and I are working on (see next post)
Hold auditions and forge on with the project
Start my second-to-last semester at community college
…
Profit!

All right, so there’s only a few things happening, but that’s a lot for me. Despite the fact that I’ve barely packed, and that I have about 1/4th of the first run through to finish on the script, I’ve pretty much got it together. Oh, and I’m actually going out and running three times a week. It’s been two weeks and I haven’t skipped out. That’s something, eh? EH?