Today was a good day. I think I need to acknowledge it and breath it in a little more. Today started out with me stepping up my psychological warfare against my roommate. He isn't a bad guy, but he is a horrible roommate for me. So for the past 3 weeks I've been trying to help him understand that he would be happier somewhere else. Today was a ramping up of the efforts. Today was me walking around the apartment naked.
When I came up with the idea I mostly thought about how much it would creep him out. I'm not sure how successful I was. He's a very liberal, but an uptight guy. I have to assume that he found it off-putting to see me sitting in the living room naked watching tennis the first thing in morning. How could he not.
But there was something else that happened that I didn't expect. It was freeing. I'm not a particularly uptight guy, but I'm well aware of the social norms and I adhere to them. I adhere to them even more than I have to. So just being butt-ass naked saying, 'look, this is what I'm doing', felt extremely comfortable. In fact, I liked it. It wasn't a sexual thing. It was just about feeling very comfortable with who I am. And if I got the bonus of making him squirm, then it was a perfect experience.
The big thing for me now is to figure out how to do it enough so that he can't get comfortable with it. In theory, I want my roommate to think every morning, "Oh god, am I going to be confronted with a naked black man again this morning." That is the goal.
Later, after he left and I got dressed, I finished audiobook #7 of 7. It feels like I have been working on these 7 books for a month. I haven't really, but it feels like it. I have spent a lot of time with earbuds in trying to create natural speech patterns out of what amounts to a series of phrases. And finishing that I feel a real sense of fulfillment. It is a sense that I don't often get because in what I do, there is no end, simply another story.
After that I hopped on the internet and found out that the healthcare bill was upheld. As a self employed person, I have been watching this very closely. Without it upheld, I will finally be able to get health insurance. And if it get enacted soon enough I may actually live longer than 2 years. That might be nice, but it would have the unfortunate side effect of me having to fill in a whole lot more time that I haven't been planing for. Hmm... so maybe that one isn't completely a good thing.
Another thing is that, all during the day I have been doing what I always do when there is a major tennis tournament on; I have been watching tennis. And because I was editing audio, I have watched every minute of the 10 hour broadcasts. The last match tonight was Nadal playing the 100 ranked player in the world. I don't particularly like Nadal, but I accept that he will be in the finals. He wasn't playing well in round 1, but he is Nadal, so no matter how he plays he will be in the finals.
So as I watched this match, his opponent was playing better than I have ever seen anyone one else play in years. But there is a reason why this guy is #100 and Nadal has 11 grand slam titles. I was very impressed with this new guy's play, but there was no way he could keep it up. I mean, the guy was playing near lights out. No one in the world could beat him the way he was playing.
So after he took the second set off of Nadal I kept thinking, "well, that was fun to watch, but here is where it ends." And I kept thinking that. Even after it got into the 5th set and the guy immediately broke Nadal I thought, "fun, but here is where it ends." The man was even serving for the match and I kept thinking the same thing.
The man beat Nadal in the second round of Wimbledon. I was shocked! It was one of the most impressive performances I have ever witnessed. I have never seen someone destroy such a great player before. It was a great match. And the added bonus of it is that Roger Federer will at least be #2 in the world once Wimbledon is complete. Go Federer!
And then finally today, I was watching Charlie Rose where he was talking with the director and stars of Spiderman. The director mentioned that at the heart of the story, it is about a boy who, because his parents have abandoned him, has a hole inside of him that he is always trying to fill.
As he talked about it, I realized that my YA story was screaming out for another side to it. My lead will be a victim of sexual abuse. She will never have felt loved or cared for. That is such a psychological rich story device. People who have massive holes to fill have motivation to make decisions about who they trust and will follow. With my lead having such a huge hole, I know exactly where the heart wrenching drama will come from in each of the stories.
Because she has this hole she will be easily swayed and when she is betrayed time and again, it will not only be painful for the audience to see, but she will seek vengence for it like a mad woman, creating even more situations that she must repent for. This might be hard to understand without knowing what the stories are, but let's just say that the story just got a level of emotional depth to go along with its intricately woven plot and insightful ponderances. I think that I have finally hit that point when all of the pillars of the story is there and I can start working on the details. With only a few things still in front of it, it's not long now. T
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