Why I Don't Do Anything Anymore

Because it hurts too much.

That's really it.

Example: I recently finished my first pilot in 7 years. It took a lot to get myself to write again but I did it and submitted it and the first thing the person said was a firehose of negative notes. This was a friend, too. Someone I thought would be kinder. Like why subject myself to that kind of condemnatio, if even friends are like that? 

I get that's the business, but I'm not interested in the business. I have a unique ability to write comedy that everyone can recognize as good in casual conversation but when it comes for it to actual translate into anything, suddenly no one can help. And so I'm just too tired to care or try anymore.

I could've been an extraordinarily good TV writer. But my brain and the system were not set up for people like me to succeed. I needed to "play the game" and kiss ass and I just can't do that. 

Somehow, everyone else knew exactly what to do. How to get a manager, an agent, where and how to submit for thing, how to network. I didn't. I never have and never will. Because the fucking stupid thing is it's all who you know. It's all friends hiring friends and recommending past collaborators and no one did that for me. 

Oh John, you're such a great writer. Okay so get me a job. Recommend me. No? I guess I'm not that good of writer. 

I'm so tired of the in-crowds that will never see me as equal. The hip cool chosen set who see me as an oddity. 

I don't do anything anymore because I got the memo. I've read it a thousand times. I have it memorized. "No one like you." I get it. 

I spend my days wondering how I want my life to look when I get old. What's the earliest I can stop working and just be. I don't want hustle for approval that will never come. I get who I am and why I don't and will never fit into that world. 

I was a mistake, unplanned. That pretty much has carried over into all aspects of my life. I don't, in any real way, make sense. I'm in the way more often than not. I've spent 20 years not getting cast, being fundamentally misunderstood, dealing with the passive disappointment of my family and others. 

I get it. I get it I get it I get it I get it I get it I get it. So I'm complying and staying out of it. You won't see me on here much anymore, or anywhere creative. I'm just going to do my work, drink my sodas, play with my Legos, walk my dogs, and get older and older until I die. That's what the world wants from me, clearly, so I'm complying. 

Fuck, that new pilot I wrote was good too. You would've liked it. But the two people I trusted to read it didn't care, which tracks with how it's always gone.

I get it. Message received. I shouldn't exist. Only problem is, I do. And not being wanted, chosen, or having any significant talent, gets so much harder every single day.