How I Am Doing

(Note: this was written on Thursday evening before I went to see Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows Parts 1&2. I wrote it because I was trying to make some sense of what I was thinking, feeling and doing in my life. And I put it up here because I need to try to be accountable, and also because I am getting really sick and tired of answering the question "How are you?" If you're interested: this is how I'm doing. If you're not, just wait a couple of days/weeks and something better will be up here. Probably about comics or vacations or both.)



"I don't get what I want. I get to pretend things are going to be fine because people tell me they are going to be."

It’s been two weeks since my wife left. And since then life has kind of ground to a halt for me. I’m still making it to (almost) all my appointments, generally keeping up with my responsibilities, and seeing my friends and family. But if I had the choice I would be doing as close to nothing as I possibly could. Most days I can barely hold myself together.

Physically: I’m falling apart. I have stopped exercising entirely, and I have been putting absolutely no effort into eating well. Which means that I’m eating stuff with lots of cheese melted on top, and my diet has become about 35% take-out or delivery. I’ve gained 5 pounds since she decided to leave (the end of May), and probably another 10 pounds since the beginning of July. My lower back, which was feeling okay in May and the beginning of June, is starting to ache again. I know I should be more active and conscious of what I eat, I just don’t have any motivation to do so. (Also, I don’t have anyone to hold me accountable and provide me with healthy dinners, which was a big part of my progress in the first place.) And no matter how much sleep I get, four or seven or ten hours, it never feels like enough.

Mentally: I can’t concentrate. I can barely focus my attention on a single episode of 30 Rock let alone a movie of 90 minutes or more. And considering I am spending almost all of my downtime (when I'm not packing) watching movies…I get tired pretty quickly. Let’s repeat that for emphasis. I get tired. Because I need to focus. On watching a movie. That is just horrible. I can’t read any complicated prose, although I did manage to get through 50 pages of a new book at breakfast time. Usually the most reading I do in a day is when I absent-mindedly check my Twitter feed. This is the guy who used to read about 5 books and 15 comics collections in a month.

Emotionally: I am numb. The most powerful emotions I feel are sadness and anger, and since I don’t really have any solid person to blame for anything I am just spewing them into the void. I try to keep those under control whenever I can, although sometimes I can’t. And those are the days that seeing a scrap of paper with her writing on it, or a bottle of her favourite drink in the fridge, or a piece of mail addressed to the both of us, will set me off on a crying binge. I wake up from dreams where we're still together and I can barely bring myself to get out of bed. Dozens of times a day I forget that no, she won’t be home when I get back, and I won’t be able to tell her the good/bad/indifferent news of my day, and then I feel like I lose her all over again.

And when I’m not actively trying to deaden my emotions, I am passively numbed by exhaustion. I barely get excited to see my friends and family. After spending an hour with people I generally want to crawl into a corner and die, but often I soldier on. I can think of exactly three times in the past fourteen days that I felt real happiness, and that was all in the same weekend.

In two hours I will be going to see a group of my friends to watch movies. Normally that would be something I would be very excited about. But I am going to be surrounded by people who love me, in various forms, and the best I can muster is “attendance.” In five days I will be going to San Diego for Comic Con, something I have wanted to attend since I first found out about it over ten years ago. I am objectively looking forward to it, but that is in danger of being smothered by a startling amount of dread. And I can’t live the rest of my life, even if it’s only half a life, underneath a curtain of fear.

So I will try. I will make a list of things that I need to do in order to live, only pick a couple of them so I don’t get overwhelmed, and take it from there. And most importantly I will try REALLY hard not to beat myself up if I don’t succeed. I have a feeling that this upcoming chapter of my life will be dominated by failure. That’s something I don’t deal with very well when I’m at my prime. Hopefully it’s a short chapter. Hopefully it is big on character development and low on whining. And hopefully in the next chapter I get a jetpack.

Mini-Regina Piles: Late April Edition

Two months in a row I have given myself the Mini-Regina Pile Challenge: make a small but manageable pile of pop cultural matter and try to burn through it in a month. The point of this exercise is twofold. First of all, it was supposed to get me to actually watch, read, and consume my way through my vast bought-but-untouched collections. Second of all, it was supposed to kick-start my writing again by making reviews and blog entries.

The first part of the challenge is going pretty well, I must say, with a couple of small hiccups. While there is some room for improvement, I am ploughing my way through over 75% of the stuff on in my pile. The writing thing? Not so much. I don't think I wrote a single review on an external site, and NOTHING on this here blog. But I keep telling myself: baby steps. Keep making the lists, making tiny improvements, and things will turn around. So, let's look at what I actually made it through last month, shall I?

Through March 31, I managed to consume the following movies, comics, and TV series:

• Kelly's Heroes
• Three The Hard Way
• Angels With Dirty Faces
• Bones, Season 2
• Showcase Presents: The Haunted Tank, Volume 1
• Superman: Escape from Bizarro World
• R.E.B.E.L.S., Volume 1: The Coming of Starro
• Put The Book Back On The Shelf: A Belle & Sebastian Anthology
• 20th Century Boys Vol. 3
• Awesome: The Indie Spinner Rack Anthology
• Marvel Boy
• Sin City: A Dame To Kill For (Volume 2)

I also made some progress on The Dick Van Dyke Show and Homicide: Life on the Street, although my Alfred Hitchcock Presents remained untouched. And I made a decision about my Star Trek box set. Even though I put it on my first list, I realized that it's the kind of show I want to savour, not gorge on. Particularly as I only have the one season right now. That's not the kind of thing I want to burn through. So I replaced it with Doctor Who: Season Two. Which isn't as long but I felt good about it (and had a LOT of fun watching it). Plus there were a couple of my DVDs that I didn't put on the list that I watched, for one reason or another (Highlander, The Marx Brothers' Room Service, Alfred Hitchcock's Number 17), which would have EVENTUALLY made it on a future pile...so it's about even.

For April I want to accomplish two main things: get rid of all the stuff that's left over from my previous two lists, and make at least one update entry every week. I also want to switch out Star Trek: Season One for something thematically appropriate and with a similar time commitment. It's going to take a little more effort, but it's all part of my process. My nerdy, nerdy process. Here's the pile for this week.

• Essential Super-Villain Team-Up, Volume 1
• Incredible Hercules: Assault on Mount Olympus
• Samurai Executioner Volume 1
• Jack Kirby's Fourth World Omnibus Volume 2
• Love And Capes Volume 1
  
• Why I Hate Saturn
  
• No Hero TPB
  
• Alfred Hitchcock Presents, S1 *
  
• The Dick Van Dyke Show, S1 *
  
• Homicide: Life On The Street, S3 **
  
• Bones, S3
  
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, S1
  
• The Aviator *
  
• For a Few Dollars More **
  
• The Godfather, Part III
  
• Ghidorah, The Three-Headed Monster
  
• Dark Passage
  
• The Circus

* Continued from February
** Continued from March

So here's hoping for more reviews, more blogging, and a higher success rate for the first month of Spring! (And yes, I know it's already 10 days into April. I am nothing if not tardy.)

Mini-Regina Piles: March Edition

One month ago, I started a challenge to myself: making my way through my massive pop culture collection, one tiny Regina pile at a time. I gave myself what I thought was a reasonable yet achievable challenge: four movies, five television seasons, and eight comics collections. Big enough to be daunting, but not so big that I would just give up on it. My plan was to update all through February with every item I removed from my pile, but being out of top blogging shape, I managed to review exactly zero items on this site. But I did give it a go, and I wanted to take a moment to examine my progress and give myself another challenge for March. So, first things first: how did I do?

Not terribly, I have to say. I got through all but one of the comics, and finished two of the television series and made small dents in two more. The movies...I'll get to those in a second. But here's what I finished in February (with some links to the reviews I did manage to post on Goodreads):

• Gon, Volume 3
• NewsRadio, Season 5
• Mad Men, Season 2
• Lobster Johnson: The Iron Prometheus
• Superman: Last Son
• Nexus Archives, Volume 1
• Absolute Planetary, Volume 1
• American Flagg: The Definitive Collection, Volume 1
• Scud The Disposable Assassin: The Whole Shebang

And the movies...well, I didn't watch any of them. Partly for a reason that I'm going to keep secret for another week or so, and partly because I watched over a dozen movies from my PVR in the month of February. (Oh, Turner Classic Movies, you are an amazing resource, but it is impossible to watch all the movies I impulsively record.) Still: I read 7 of my 8 comics, and over 100 pages of the massive Haunted Tank phonebook, and cleared off some shows that had been sitting unfinished for months. So I'm putting one in the wins column.

For March I want to continue to challenge myself and stretch a little bit, while taking advantage of the increased amounts of free time (32nd birthday, Spring Break, slightly reduced late worknights). So I'm keeping all the incomplete items from last month, as well as more than enough new ones to make up for things:

• Kelly's Heroes *
• Three The Hard Way *
• Angels With Dirty Faces *
• The Aviator *
• For a Few Dollars More
  
• Star Trek: The Original Series, Season 1 *
• Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Season 1 **
• The Dick Van Dyke Show, Season 1 **
• Homicide: Life On The Street, Season 3
• Bones, Season 2
  
• Showcase Presents: The Haunted Tank, Volume 1 **
• Superman: Escape from Bizarro World
• R.E.B.E.L.S., Volume 1: The Coming of Starro
  
• Put The Book Back On The Shelf: A Belle & Sebastian Anthology
  
• 20th Century Boys Vol. 3
• Awesome: The Indie Spinner Rack Anthology
  
• Marvel Boy
• Sin City: A Dame To Kill For (Volume 2)
  

* Continued from February, untouched
** Continued from February, unfinished

I'll update more regularly as I get through them, and probably post a picture of my pile in the next few days. But that's enough to do me for now. I really hope I can tackle EVERYTHING on this list, because I have plans for this little experiment. That's right, I have even MORE stuff I want to pile on. Because apparently I have way more free time than I think I do.

Mini-Regina Piles: The Lamest Journey Begins With A Single Step

Testing...testing...is this thing still on?

*ahem*

Okay. I had an idea the other day, and I figured blogging about it would be an interesting way to go about it and it might might keep me on-task in the bargain. So if there's anyone still here, or if anyone stumbles across this place: thanks. Hopefully I'll make it worth your while.

So, for those of you who don't know me: I am a big fan of popular culture. Movies, comics, television, and books both fiction and non-. I love to watch and read and listen (to music, standup comedy, radio plays, and audiobooks). And because I love these things so much, when I go out shopping, I see a LOT of stuff I want. "Oh man," I'll say to myself, "Quantum Leap DVDs are only $14.99 per season. I think I should get ALL OF THEM." And then I do just that. It's a kind of madness, I think. A madness that has no cure.

Which leads to my home having a higher-than-average amount of shelves, all of them full and overflowing with movies, cds, and (as The Rhino would say) "paper DVDs". I have always wanted to make my way through these chunks of unconsumed pop culture, but every time I feel like I'm making a dent, the madness takes over, and I find myself with three new Discworld books and a bunch of back issues. And so, no progress is made.

Now, one of the podcasts that I listen to - 11 O'Clock Comics - has developed this concept of the "Regina Pile," which is their name for your pile of unread comics that stacks up. I really don't want to get into the reason why it shares its name with the capital city of Saskatchewan, but that's jist of it. And as far as comics go, I have a very, VERY BIG Regina pile. But I never thought about applying it to the other "stuff" that I own. And when I was sitting in the basement last weekend, trying to find the next thing to read, it hit me: I could make Mini-Regina piles that I could work on every month, small enough to be manageable but still a challenge.

The first thing I had to do, though - because I am incredibly anal retentive and love making lists - is compile all my unwatched and unread items together. This was a tougher task than I'd initially thought, so I focused mostly on my DVDs (both film and tv) and my comics trade paperbacks. And while I was both surprised and SHOCKED by the sheer mass of my unconsumed junk, I think I can make dents in it. A number of tiny little dents.

For February, I'm actually tackling two challenges: first of all, my regular Mini-Regina Challenge, and second of all, the "My Wife Will Delete All The Movies Older Than 3 Months Old On My DVR By The End Of February" Challenge. And considering I have about...20 movies that I need to either watch or abandon in 27 days, I'm making my Mini-Regina Pile rather small to start: 4 movies, 0 TV Boxed Sets (because I'm already in the middle of 5), and 4 Comics Trades (plus the 4 that I've already started).

I took a look at my lists and tried to make things as varied as possible. And finally, I ended up with the following for my February pile:

• Kelly's Heroes
• Three The Hard Way
• Angels With Dirty Faces
• The Aviator
• Mad Men, Season 2 *
• Star Trek: The Original Series, Season 1 *
• NewsRadio, Season 5 *
• Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Season 1 *
• The Dick Van Dyke Show, Season 1 *
• Gon, Volume 3
• Lobster Johnson: The Iron Prometheus
• Superman: Last Son
• Nexus Archives, Volume 1
• Absolute Planetary, Volume 1 *
• Showcase Presents: The Haunted Tank, Volume 1 *
• American Flagg: The Definitive Collection, Volume 1 *
• Scud The Disposable Assassin: The Whole Shebang *

(* - Denotes something I'm already in the middle of.)


And that doesn't count my PVR movies. Something tells me this first month is going to be a spectacular failure, but at least I'm going to try, dang it. I'll try and put at least a little something on this blog whenever I finish something, which should make me more of a presence here and might actually kickstart my Creativity Experiment of 2011 (slogan to be determined). See you soon, internet pop culture fiends. And pray for my sanity, because that is a LOT of stuff to get through.

Rambling: My Surprisingly Apathetic Thoughts On The Film Industry

This has been percolating around in my head for a while, and I don't necessarily know if I'm 100% pleased with my conclusions, but it's as close to an opinion as I'm going to get on this subject. Ramblings about movies, culture, society, and economics ahead, some thoughtful, some grossly under-researched, some original, some not. Forge ahead with me, won't you?

There's a commercial I've seen on television for a video phone, and the tagline absolutely grinds my gears:

"Cinema quality picture - in the palm of your hand."

And every time I see it I want to yell at the screen. No. No. NO. That is not possible. Unless you are holding the phone DIRECTLY IN FRONT OF YOUR EYES so that it is taking up 80% OF YOUR VISION, then it is not cinema quality. Because part of cinema quality is cinema SIZE. And the absolutely insane theater prices and the relative ease of pirating movies over the internet means that more and more people - and here I am thinking of "young people" but really people of any age - are watching movies exclusively on their television screens or smaller.

I love movies: I go to the movies at least twelve times a year, and often more. I am one of the butts in seats. One of what I think is a dying breed: the MOVIE fan. Originally I think I loved movies for the spectacle, and then I went for the story. What happened to the spectacle? If all you care about is ingesting a story, then why see the movie? Just read the screenplay. The cinematography, the set design, the lighting: that's all important, and you need to be able to SEE it.

And really, if it's just about knowing what's happened in the story, then you might as well watch your DVDs at 4x speed with subtitles on. Because that way you get the story. But you miss everything else: you miss the delivery, the timing, the acting, and the mood. If all you want is the story, go to Wikipedia. If you want the experience, you need more than just a 3 inch screen. (Or better yet: just read the summaries on Wikipedia, save yourself an hour and a half. It's the same thing, right? You know the plot points; you've basically seen the movie.)

I'm not saying you can't watch some movies on the small screen. Anchorman doesn't need the full-screen surround sound experience, particularly if, like me, you've seen it ten times or so. But you shouldn't see Inception or Fellini Satyricon or Citizen Kane for the first time on your iPod.

And yes, I know that movies are expensive, yeah, but there are ways around it. Discount theater tickets, discount theaters, etc. But I make a decent wage, and I can afford to go out to the theater more than a couple of times a year. But I think about people who are just struggling to get by, and want to have a fun experience for them and their families. What are they going to do: shill out thirty bucks for their family of four to go out on Discount Tuesdays or rent something for five bucks at Blockbuster or Netflix? Or just go to a torrent website and download something for free? I don't have a large family, it's just me and my wife. But if I had kids, and money was tight, I know what option I'd pick.

And it sucks, because the movies used to be the refuge of the working classes: you'd go to a double feature for five, ten cents, meet up with your friends or take someone out on a date and make a whole day of it. Even with inflation you can't go from five cents to twelve bucks in less than a hundred years. Movie companies are trying to recoup their losses from people who are renting or pirating, but really, they're forcing the very people away that they want to keep. Which "forces" them to drive the prices up, and now the snake head is eating itself. (And 3-D isn't the answer: people are already getting wise to that scheme. Like they did in the 50s.)

I really do feel that it's important to see movies in the THEATER every once in a while, and not just the big explosive blockbusters, because if you only patronize the mindless explosion-and-shotgun-blast movies that is all that people are going to make. Go see a comedy, or a drama. You might think that it's not going to be worth your investment, but if it's a movie you're interested in, no matter what the genre, then I truly believe it will be. Because it's not just about knowing what the story is about. It's about a social experience. A social experience that is being slowly eroded by greed and laziness. Which I think is sad. Maybe movie theaters will eventually run themselves down; maybe the death of the drive-ins was the first step towards complete extinction. And I'll be sad if that happens. And I'll keep pulling out my old favourites on DVD or watching Turner Classic Movies and watching them. But it won't be the same as being in a theater full of people gasping, laughing, or crying at what they're seeing on screen.

Rambling: My Changing Thoughts On The Self-Help Industry

When I was a child, I thought that one of the things that defined being a "grown up" - aside from the ability to order Big Macs and Peanut Buster Parfaits without having to ask your mom - was being able to do things on your own, without having to ask for help. I mean, as a little kid, you need help with pretty much EVERYTHING. Or at least, I did. Before I turned ten, I did almost everything with at least cursory supervision and guidance: driving (the tractor), making food, doing chores, etc. I don't know if that is because I was bad at a lot of stuff, or if my parents were a little overprotective, or if that's what happens to most kids. But I always felt that I grew up with every little task that my parents deemed me capable of doing on my own.

(As an brief aside: this mindset is likely why I don't like doing anything I'm not immediately good at, particularly sports & other physical activities. If I can't do it successfully the first time, then I generally don't try again. I think that has some kind of basis in the "you shouldn't need help" mindset; if I need to ask for help or guidance, then I obviously shouldn't be doing it.)

When I graduated University, I kept that idea in my head. Being an adult means that you don't need help with anything. Or at least, you shouldn't. Particularly in your field of "expertise." I mean, you have a degree now, doesn't that mean that you should understand pretty much everything about it? And if you don't, all that means is that you need to read more, study more, and figure it out for yourself. And that's pretty much the way I've operated my entire life. Until this afternoon.

I'm not going to go into the fine details, but to sum up: there was a motivational speaker at my school division's big meeting today, and he was talking about changing your life by changing your outlook. I've never put much stock in motivational speakers, new-age gurus, or self-help books. Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, The Purpose-Driven Life, How To Win Friends & Influence People: all of these smacked of people who were just trying to make you feel good while taking your money, psychological snake-oil salesmen at best and spiritual saboteurs at worst. I equated Steven Covey, Dale Carnegie, et al. with televangelists like Jim Bakker and Peter Popoff. Besides, who has the audacity to tell you what to do to "improve" yourself? You live your life, not some guy with a business suit and sandals who wants to talk to you about "realizing your own potential." I wouldn't trust a guy like that to mow my lawn, let alone organize my life.

And yet...

...today, those thoughts were tested a little. Not by anything specific the speaker said, but by a thought I had while listening to him. A thought that was basically: "Why NOT ask for help?"

It's hardly a breakthrough, I know. But it had never honestly entered my mind before. I had half-heartedly entertained the notion of getting a financial advisor, but never actually acted on it. The truth of the matter is, though, that the world I live in is incredibly complex, and there is no way I can possibly make all the decisions I would like to, correctly, the first time. I still believe that most of the self-help gurus out there have done more harm than good. But there are experts in varuiys other fields that I respect, and I seek out their guidance and trust their opinions. And there are people who have already done the things that I am going to do, and they might have insight into my current situation. So why NOT ask them? Why NOT brainstorm with them and try to be better?

I'm not saying that I'm going to start spouting aphorisms and trademarked catchphrases; it's unlikely that I'll buy into any of the self-help cultures out there. I can't stand new-age spiritual claptrap, I almost ripped my copy of The Alchemist into tiny pieces as I read it so no-one else would have to read it EVER, and the metaphors and figurative language that most book authors use make me feel nauseous. I'll never be the guy with the life coach, telling people to live their lives according to the Four Directions. But maybe I can feel comfortable asking for other people's opinions, and maybe branching out. Because I know now that I honestly can't do everything on my own.

I know. Not really mind-blowing stuff. But something I think I needed to consider.