Operation Achieve Anything: Day One-Hundred-Forty-Nine, Dateline 5-29-2018
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“Here is the test to find whether your mission on earth is finished. If you’re alive, it isn’t.”
Good morning crickets. Welcome to day number one-hundred-forty-nine of Operation Achieve Anything. Yesterday I had a tad bit of a scare when the work from my day job ran dry, because this new department that I’m working for is horrible when it comes to communicating and I’m still not fully sure if the gig is permanent, semi-permanent, or just long term and will be over as soon as the collective queue runs dry, just like how it works with my one-off gigs that usually max-out at a week.
Either way, I think I’m now in, at least, somewhat of a comfort zone since my next paycheck should be enough to cover a legitimate full mental health evaluation. Up to this point in my life, any disorder has been diagnosed by either a general practitioner or a shrink who’s only talked to me for less than an hour. This is why every time, I seem to be diagnosed with something a little different making it hard to seek true help.
I feel that with an official diagnosis, I may be able to seek help to find higher quality work that challenges me in ways that I love that I would never be able to sell myself for because of my mental hurdles. I know for a fact that I have the skills, ability, and experience to be able to find something that I love but my inability to express myself clearly through talk makes me feel like I’m stuck in the entry-level world where all that I end up doing is working hard enough to slip under the radar with one eye always on the clock.
This is probably the real reason why I desperately want to make it as a writer because it’s not about the fame or glory. If I had my druthers, (and an editor) I wouldn’t mind just sharing all of my work through this website for people to read for free if they want instead of trying to promote every piece as if it was something the entire world must see. After all, I always joked that I was shooting straight for the middle.
It turns out, this rambling plays into yesterday’s assignment where I was supposed to envision myself as a superhero, which never sounded interesting to me. For one, I’m still in an ongoing feud with The Hero’s Journey because I feel it was useful prior to the time where the structure was common knowledge, but now that it’s caught on, I feel like its use leads to the cookie cutter cinema that we now all complain about, but it’s impossible to break the mold because of chicken shit investors.
I always wished that I knew enough history to write a spin-off of the movie Gladiator that would cover the same story only through the eyes of some schlub who was sitting in the Coliseum audience and didn’t do anything great at all. He wouldn’t be a hero or even an anti-hero because he’d be too busy coping with the mundane reality of daily life that a majority of existence also has to deal with. He wouldn’t be battling external villains because he’d be too busy battling the demons in his head while trying to find his place in the world where he could just fit in.
Don’t get me wrong, I get why The Hero’s Journey is a popular tool for writing stories that keep the audience within their comfort zone, I just wish people would stop promoting that it’s impossible to go any other route. I think this is why I really liked the ‘90s indie film movement when filmmaking storytellers felt more free to experiment. I also feel like this is why I now prefer watching strangers on YouTube and their content over any mainstream scripted work.
With that said, I politely decline the task at hand and will not envision myself as a superhero because I’d rather be myself. I’ve been attempting to fake it until I make it for far too long and am done putting on masks in order to play characters. I don’t know if my obsession with accepting the mundane reality of existence will ever get me anywhere but I’m committed to exploring the topic until I figure it out or keel over.
As for today’s assignment, it’s kind of an add-on to yesterday’s superhero task, where I’m supposed to take the heroic code that I created and implement it into my work. I guess in a way my code ended up being to explore the acceptance of our mundane reality until the very end and have been doing so through this blog.
I’m sure I’ll have more to say about the subject by the time I check in with tomorrow’s update. Until then, it’s now time to wrap this thing up as usual by saying, good day and good luck to you and all of your projects.
Talk to you soon.
Sincerely,
The Wicker Breaker
P.S. Below are links to my novel, which I plan to promote as part of Operation Achieve Anything, as well as a link to where you can buy the book that is providing the structure to this project in case you would like to purchase it in order to play along.
