(no subject)

[rm]

I've mailed the Library of NSW, so that's one more small task completed.

I just sent out a headshot with the note "comfortable with rats" -- this speaks to life without an agent perhaps more than anything ever.

I'm so markedly different than how and how I used to be. It's frustrating, to want to write about that, but realizing there are not true witnesses to the relevant arenas. I've always been an odd contradiction in the degree to which I live in my body and am comfortable with it more than most people, but yet am not all that interested in the tangible physical world around me. It's not anything noble or ascetic or particularly Buddhist -- more than I'm easily distractable, but I'd not actually had cause to explain that to anyone in ages, much less ever had it come out concisely, and that interested me. I guess it's a natural part of getting older, but the talk and the walk get closer and closer together, on several fronts, and that distrbs me, albeit in a good way.

One of the crappiest things about being any sort of artistic professional is the dicksizing -- how many stories you've published, what roles youv'e played in what theatres, etc -- that you wind up spending all this time trying to impress other people (and more often your competition as opposed to the people who can get you published and give you roles), that you never really ever pause to consider why someone should be impressed with you, or if you'd be impressed with you.

I know I seem like an arrogant woman, and one thoroughly in love with herself, but there's an amazing amount of my life that I just don't happen to notice regardless or perhaps because of how in the moment I can be (and let's not even get into the self-ahatred factor). And while I'm often pleased with myself, it rarely occurs to me that I've done anything particularly admirable or impressive. Sometime today, in the warmer weather and slightly longer day, it occured to me that while most of my life is pocked with amazing bouts of horrific underachievement, and I've yet to reach anything remotely resembling where I want to be in any of my endeavors, yeah, I'd be impressed with me from afar. Simply because I'm voracious and haven't let the broadness of my interests do anything but benefit me, even if being a jack-of-all trades is most probably the simplest (and most common) recipe for personal failure as well as probably the most annoying one to be around. I've not really achieved all that much yet, but I am sort of impressive. And it's a very strange feeling, grokking that. And I keep cycling back to this short film script in all this somehow -- it's important that I pursue it to its logical conclusion, with the caveat that I'm not sure what that will be yet.

and I always live in terror of posting things like this because it's so Wanky Wanky Rach, Press the Button in the Middle of Her Back and She'll Utter One of Ten Self-Agrandizements! New from Mattel! Now, with More Posable Limbs for a Full Range of Crappy Directorial Hand Gestures! Boots for Confrontations with Taxi Cabs Sold Separately!

ETA:

Photograph was airmailed on the 11th -- any day now.

Comments

[splix.livejournal.com]

It's frustrating, to want to write about that, but realizing there are not true witnesses to the relevant arenas.

That's a curious thing to say. Should that really affect whether or not you write about internal change? Doesn't the reader become the witness?

[rm.livejournal.com]

What frustrates me most about this topic is perhaps my inability to explain it.

But when I was in my early twenties I spent all this time being the very flash, fake-tough sorta girl. All my friends were men and I was one of the boys. And every sexual and romantic encounter I had existed on the basis of me issuing a challenge and smirking. Because that was about the most I could do to instigate anything, and to put it in a more adult light -- to take responsibility for anything.

And despite the fact that it's very hard for me, and I don't often succeed at it, and I'm more withdrawn fromthe world than I used to be because I just have less need of it -- I'm really not like that anymore. And I don't think peopel who have known me a long time would see that or even necessarily agree with it, because slow change looks like nothing and I think in long term friendships we do have this thing where we need people to remain on some level as they were when we first met them.

Basically it's all about observation that matters to no one but me, and _that_'s ultimately peculiar, because there's no one around to confirm the reality, which is the sort of thing that obsesses an only child, who necessarily lives their early life without corroboration of anything of who they are, for there is no equal (a sibling) with which to compare notes.

[splix.livejournal.com]

Basically it's all about observation that matters to no one but me, and _that_'s ultimately peculiar, because there's no one around to confirm the reality, which is the sort of thing that obsesses an only child, who necessarily lives their early life without corroboration of anything of who they are, for there is no equal (a sibling) with which to compare notes.

Ah. I get that, though it's not my experience, having bounced off sibs and pals, happily not-self-aware, for the first twenty-eight or so years of my life. FWIW, I am... I don't think 'enjoying' is the right word, but I am taken with your methods of processing and growth, slow change notwithstanding, as you document it here on LJ.

[rothko.livejournal.com]

i dunno. if i compare the rach i see now to the one i met back on the bbs that shall not be named, i am blown away by the change i see. obviously, i don't have any way of knowing what's in your very very inner world, but the changes going on there have definitely made their way to the surface. like even if you just lay out the facts of your life, taking out any of the personal perspective you give us here. it's *amazing*.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

Speaking of the BBS that shall not be named, whenever I think of them, I realize that they're all probably still sitting around waiting for me to show up on A&E's (or whatever network it is) Diary of an Affair. I will always be a 19-year-old wannabe whore to them. And that's both galling and hilarious.

I just have to say...

[kalichan.livejournal.com]

I so want one of those action figures.

Re: I just have to say...

[rm.livejournal.com]

plastic fantastic

[rahalia-cat.livejournal.com]

The fundamental difference between you and I is that while I'm over here, plodding through life, earning enough to get by and have the occasional nice holiday to break up the monotony of 9-5 [ or, in my case, 4:30-2 ] you're out there living life.

Remember that post I made about the Tannhauser Gate? Yep. That.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Also, I poke you with sticks.

[copperwise.livejournal.com]

I know I seem like an arrogant woman, and one thoroughly in love with herself,

Actually you seem like someone with confidence in herself, and who has every right to be. And that makes you very compelling. And impressive.

[graene.livejournal.com]

Exactly.

Also - "in love with" as in you think you are perfection is very different from the "love" as in sees everything about someone, including flaws, and accepts them as is and cares regardless. The latter is something I think you do have, for yourself and others, and is part of what makes you so compelling and wonderful. If more of us could do that for ourselves, perhaps we'd all be easier to live with.