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everyone thinks they have good taste.

Tonight, I had a long talk with Emily. She was trying to encourage me in a moment where I felt pretty shitty about just about everything in my life. She’s awesome like that. She shared with me this great quote from Ira Glass, something that I think holds quite a bit of truth. I think he is right about many people who create, but it isn’t as universal as he makes it out to be.

Ira Glass on Storytelling from David Shiyang Liu on Vimeo.
 

For all it’s truth and beauty, it is missing one key component… tons of people who want to create actually don’t have great taste, or talent, or anything resembling either. For every Ira Glass, struggling and fighting with remarkable talent and potential to create something beautiful, there are thousands of people creating shit while they think they are doing something amazing.

It’s the primary thing I wrestle with when I am trying to give myself permission to spend time creating and writing. What if I suck? What if I’m terrible, and I only think I have good taste? There are a countless number of hack writers out there who think they are the cat’s meow, who believe they have great taste and that the only thing keeping them from fame and accolades is a lucky break here or there.

Granted, sometimes you can be terrible and still make it. There are plenty of absolutely terrible writers who do become wildly successful financially. But bad writers making good obviously doesn’t mean that all writers who can’t catch a break are talented. Simple logic is all that is needed to make clear that most unsuccessful writers are actually bad at what they do. Sure, there are talented folks out there who haven’t been discovered yet, but how am I to know which group I fall into? I want to believe that I have good taste, that I know good from bad, but doesn’t everyone think that? Most people don’t have good taste, but that doesn’t stop them from thinking they do while they spend their nights at Applebee’s watching CBS.

My trouble is that I have been writing for somewhere around 11 years, and I can’t even get most of my best friends to read my blog consistently. Doesn’t that offer a pretty clear indication that I’m not any good at this?

It’s quite the quandary, that’s for sure!

 

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bad nights with kavinsky.

Tonight I found out that the bar I work for will no longer be open on Mondays, which is a shift I work from open to close. That’s a pretty massive hit to my paycheck. There are plenty of positives to take away from this: primarily, I don’t want to work there anyway and this will hopefully provide even more motivation to find a new gig. However, positive isn’t how I’m feeling about it. What it really does is throw into sharper contrast how far I am from where I want to be, how frustrated I am with where I am in my life right now. I truly believe I’m capable of so much more than what I am doing now, but I am where I am and that’s all that’s real. Potential, talent, smarts, hopes, dreams, whatever… they are all fictional if they never materialize into something more tangible. I don’t want potential, I want vocation, I want to be the person I think I am capable of being. Instead, this setback shows me that I am nowhere near that.

I could spin it positively, but that would be a lie. What I’m really feeling is frustration and anxiety.

What does one do when this is the feeling and circumstances of the day? Well, for one, polish up the resumé and apply to as many places as possible. For another, listen to OutRun by Kavinsky, because sometimes what I need is a conceptual French House album based on 80’s movie scores about a teenager who is killed in 1986 when he crashes his Testerossa and returns from the dead, his soul fused with his car, to make electronic music. Okay, so I always need that, I just need it more some nights.

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justified, or, talk crowder to me.

“I love the way you talk, using 40 words when four will do.” A character says that about Boyd Crowder in an episode of Justified. It may be most true about Crowder, but it goes for many of the villainous characters on the show. Hero Raylan Givens lets his swagger do most of his talking, but the varying degrees of bad guys are fond of monologues and long, well-crafted threats, explanations, and all manner of verbiage.

It’s simply the show’s writing style, and I love it. Even less wordy Raylan still has a very particular and well-worded way about him. He may use the four words instead of the 40, but those four words are usually perfect. When you combine that style with the remarkably solid casting, you get magic. To use a cliché, some scenes are simply a joy to watch for the dialogue alone (both the writing and the delivery). Which is a special bonus, because there is plenty to like about Justified in addition to the diction.

That’s why Season 6 has left me in a serious good news/bad news situation. The bad news is that this is the show’s final season, and I will be relegated to the world of rewatching favorite episodes when I need a fix. Tragic. The good news is that with the addition of Garret Dillahunt, Mary Steenburgen, and Sam Elliott to this year’s recurring cast, the show is going out with a bang… probably literally considering Raylan’s tendencies. Those actors are exactly the sort of folks I want delivering that trademark Justified discourse.

Now if only I can find a way to convince the appropriate parties that there need to be a few Justified movies after the show wraps up, and we can all enjoy a happy ending.

Boyd

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five things i’ll do this year.

Every year, I make a long list of things I plan to accomplish. Some things are easy, some things are hard; some things are important, some things are trivial. I like my long lists, but Emily saw a suggestion recently that your yearly to-do list only have three to five things on it. If you cross one off early, you can add one to replace it, but at any one time the list should be short and sweet… or bitter, if that’s your jam.

This makes quite a bit of sense. My longer lists do nothing in terms of prioritizing what’s actually important to me. If I’m forced to pick five things that are the most important in that year, it will help me to see where I’m actually aiming, and might help me make the most of years that go by faster and faster as I age.

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1. Get a new job – I love bartending, and I want to keep doing it. So I’m not looking for an entirely new genre of work, but merely a new venue in which to do what I’m already doing. That will be easier said than done. I’ve got about 14 months of experience behind a bar now, and in Seattle that doesn’t really count for much. I’ve been out again trying to meet industry folks, because in the Seattle industry especially, it’s all about the people you know. I’ve got 10.5 more months, so hopefully before the end of 2015 I’ll have a new bartending home.

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2. Complete seven writing projects and submit them for publication – If I never get paid to write, I want that to be true because I am a failed writer, and not simply a writer who never really tried. Now that I’ve been doing the work again, it’s time to start finishing projects, editing the hell out of them, and submitting them to people who publish whatever that particular sort of writing happens to be. I’ve only tried that twice, and even that was half-hearted. It’s time to dive in and risk actual failure, especially since failure is often what must come before any sort of success.

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3. Run in an official 5k, lose ten pounds – I just recently wrote about running, so no need to go into detail as to why it’s my exercise of choice. With insomnia and depression, exercise and weight quickly become an issue if I’m not very intentional and disciplined. I’m already off to a good start this year in the weight loss department, and as far as running a 5k somewhere it’s just picking one and signing up. So… this one should be pretty simple to cross off if I just continue doing the work.

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4. Get my first tattoo – This one is already in the works, I just have to follow through with it. It happens this spring. Deposit is already down.

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5. Travel somewhere I’ve never been – I’ve also recently written about my desire for more travel. Our ability to do so is limited by the amount of money I make (or don’t make?) at my current job. We can’t go too far away this year to some exotic locale, but we can go on our first road trip in quite a while. We’re planning to head to Salt Lake City. A place I’ve never been, so it counts, and Emily has heard good things about parts of it. The destination could still change, but we are in the process of planning a fall road trip to get that all important adventure and discovery into our diet.

 

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kingsman.

If you find yourself wanting to head to the movies to have a great time, go see Kingsman: The Secret Service. I’m hard pressed to think of a better time I’ve had at the cinema in quite a while.

The trailer, back when it was released, was enough to intrigue me, but it also left me worrying this would be another hastily rendered spy movie that was at best mildly entertaining. The way the trailer was edited made me wonder if the main character would be hard to like, and if Samuel L. Jackson’s super-villain would be more irritating than not. As it would turn out, it was just an instance of misleading trailer editing, an all too common problem. Taron Egerton’s turn as our protagonist ‘Eggsy’ was wildly likable, and Samuel L. Jackson’s lines were actually perfect when allowed the proper pacing for humor or tension, or both in most cases.

Taron Egerton truly was great. His performance had the perfect mixture of cockiness and vulnerability that is so coveted in roles like this, but can be really hard to get right. He made it look effortless. He has all the makings of a star, and the higher than expected opening weekend for Kingsman is going to speed his ascension.

Anyone who has read this blog at all knows that a contemporary take on a genre that is at once a sendup and a celebration is a quick way to my heart when done well. Kingsman is so very much that. It’s hilarious, dark, and violent, not to mention risky with it’s solid R rating for a movie that would often have been watered down to increase the box office with a PG-13 sticker. Instead, it pulls no punches (and throws in some dirty extra jabs), and does to the gentleman spy sub-genre what Kick-Ass did to capes and tights. Unsurprising, since both films are adaptations of Mark Millar comics.

Best of all, this is just the world-building and table setting for a franchise that could bring joy to audiences for some time. Especially because it leaves more possibilities for future installments than Kick-Ass did, which is a part of what led to that horrible sequel.

© 2014 Twentieth Century Fox

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ode to regulars.

Here I am getting in another post well after midnight following a bartending shift. My bar is not what you would call a Valentine’s Day destination, so after making the hell out of some pan-seared steak and a butternut & shrimp risotto for dinner (if I do say so myself), I proceeded to go in and work behind one of the only bars in Seattle that wasn’t slammed tonight.

The primary takeaway after a slow night like this one: regulars are what make my job great.

I love most parts of my job. I love making cocktails, learning more and more about spirits and drinks, and being a part of a tribe that I’ve usually experienced as generous and accommodating. Yet, it’s still my regulars that I would take with me if I could only pick one of the aspects of my job. They make my shifts worth working, especially on a slow night.

Sure, there are a small handful of folks that I wish would lose our address and never come in again, but the vast majority of the folks who visit me on a regular basis are people I plan to be friends with long after I leave my current employer, or bartending altogether. The laughs and good chats I have with these folks makes me feel damn lucky that I get paid to hang out behind a bar and make conversation.

I hope that, at whatever job you do, you have the equivalent of my regulars. At the end of the day, it’s about the people around us. A great job can get awful fast when the people around you are terrible. Likewise, an otherwise shitty job can be redeemed pretty significantly if the people we get to interact with make it so. I hope that you have people like the latter as part of your job, be they customers or coworkers or whatever.

Here’s to my regulars, who so often turn a bad night into a good one.

 

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five things, valentine’s edition.

When I’m in the middle of a writing challenge with a friend in which I need to come up with something else to write about every day for four weeks, it probably isn’t a great idea to do a post where I fire off five topics at the same time. Good thing ‘itprobablyisntagreatidea’ is my middle name.

It’s Valentine’s weekend, so here are movies you could watch to make the best of a generally stupid holiday.

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1. What If

This is the straight-up traditional V-Day movie recommendation. Romantic comedies live and die with chemistry. If you like the main what-if-daniel-radcliffe-zoe-kazan-01-636-380characters, and genuinely enjoy watching them interact, many other sins can be overlooked. That’s the beating heart that makes What If a winner. It’s easy to want to watch these characters interact, in particular the repartee is winning and natural.

If you want to watch a traditional Valentine’s Day movie that doesn’t suck (and is actually pretty great), you could do a lot worse than this one.

 

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2. Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, and Before Midnight

28-before-midnight

Maybe what you need for your Valentine’s Saturday this year is a movie marathon. And what better marathon could there be than the smartest, most satisfying relationship in the history of cinema told over the course of three films?

Even if you’ve seen these before, you can never watch them too many times. Fantastic filmmaking that is fresh, intelligent, experimental, and honestly engages all the complexities of relationships and identity.

 

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3. The Lunchbox

I’ve already written about this lovely epistolary film. You should watch it some time, and Valentine’s Day is a great excuse to make this weekend that time.

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4. They Came Together

they-came-together-paul-rudd-amy-poehler1Like Wet Hot American Summer and The Baxter before it, They Came Together is a few folks from The State throwing ridiculous movie clichés into one over the top sendup, and bringing some of the funniest people around along for the ride.

If you’re more in the mood this V-Day to watch a skewering of all the dumb shit mainstream rom-coms try for force down our throat every year, and laugh your ass off, this is the choice for you.

 

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5. The Secret in Their Eyes

Another film I’ve already written about, The Secret in Their Eyes is a great option if you want to go in a different direction altogether, but keep romance in the mix. An Argentine thriller about a retired detective looking back on his life, haunted by a murder case he could never solve, largely because of the political upheaval and corruption in Argentina in the 1970’s. Moving between past and present, the film masterfully unfolds both the story of the case, and the story of the man’s unconsummated love for the judge he worked on the case with for decades.

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the running man.

I didn’t expect it a few years ago when I started, but running has become a centralizing metaphor for my entire life. At this point I only run three times a week, and I have had huge spans since I started where I stopped running altogether. Still, when I am getting runs in I have a mental language to help me organize and motivate in all the other areas of my life.

I started running because I was getting really fat and unhealthy. I don’t want to die in my 50’s of a heart attack like my grandfather did, but I knew the chances that I was going to permanently curtail myself from eating the foods I love were hovering right around zero. Running seemed like a way I could only moderately change my diet and yet still get healthier, lose weight, and feel better.

What happened was that I found much more than just weight loss and more energy.

Running taught me that the only bad run is the one I don’t do. I can go out a few times in a row and have the shittiest runs ever, runs that feel terrible, that are slow and discouraging, and then I go out there again and have my best run ever. Those terrible runs were working toward the great one. The only thing that is genuinely bad for me is when I make excuses and skip my runs altogether. Doing the work: the dull, grinding work of shitty runs, is what gets results that make me feel proud of my effort and then spurs me on to keep going.

As someone who struggles with cripplingly severe insomnia and pretty serious depression and anxiety issues, everything can feel difficult sometimes. Leaving the house, cleaning, taking the garbage out: the smallest things can feel overwhelming. I often have a useless form of perfectionism coupled with pride, which instead of inspiring me to work harder and strive to do better, just keeps me from doing work until I know all variables are stacked in my favor… so almost never. The mentality in running, where I just do the runs no matter what and take pride in getting my ass out when I’d rather put it off a day, bleeds over into those difficult places. Force myself to do the stuff that feels overwhelming, and sometimes it gets a little easier. Force myself to write every day no matter what, and know that the lousy times where my writing is awful and I can’t get anything worthwhile down is part of the muscle and stamina building that makes the good writing possible.

Running is what reminds that I just need to put one foot in front of the other, one run at a time, and progress and growth takes care of itself.

 

 

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