Anonymous asked: Where is "What we talk about when we talk about nothing" from?
Nowhere. It’s just a phrase I came up with that I felt suited the content of this account in a vaguely abstract sort of way.
I told my dad I really needed a new cell phone and he bought me a fucking iPhone
I’m excited and all, but fuck! We can’t afford this!
I’ll use it - a LOT - but, ugh. I feel so guilty. I’m unemployed (here’s another reason to find a fucking job) and the woman I used to be a near full-time babysitter for during the summer has moved down to SoCal, so I have no way of making money right now. To top it off, I have less than $100 to my name - of which, even if I offered to them, my parents wouldn’t accept for the phone/data plan for the next couple of months. All I’m going to get out of them is more reasons (i.e. mostly unconscious guilttripping) to get a fucking job. It’s hard when you don’t have anything to put on a resume and the only respectable sounding adult-like figures you could use as references are your parents friends from church that you haven’t even said hello to for over a year and tend to avoid whenever they come by the house to visit.
aslkdfjl;asdjflslka I sort of feel like I’m fretting about nothing, but the dynamic with my parents is already pretty fucked up (mainly due to me being too terrified to tell them that I’m agnostic with atheistic tendencies and a few other typical teenage discrepancies that I know would break their hearts and ravage the trust they have in me) in an underlying, creeping sort of way, but still. Fucking still.
I’m glad to have a new phone, I’ve been using the same dreadful thing for four years now and its had difficulty holding a charge for more than a few hours and has been turning itself off frequently for the last month or so, but still.
Time to check out the local temp agencies, I suppose. Pretty sure I don’t need references for those.
I think I’ve finally stopped caring for someone unconditionally.
I couldn’t possibly be happier with myself more than I am right now, even if I tried.
That fair thing was a bit of a bust, in a way. It was a helluva lot more local and tiny more of a, “here, come act in our movies! or pay us to make movies for you!” kind of deal and less of what I was hoping. I found out there’s a film club in my community college district, though! Sadly it’s at a Sacramento campus and since I don’t have a car I’m not sure if I’ll be able to attend or not. I’ll have to see if any of my film junkie friends would be interested in going with me. I also found out that there’s a non-profit group in the area that meets once a month for cold reads and does a lot of presentations and shit. The members promote/support/work with one another on projects, I’m probably going to check it out next month. Sounds like a potentially good way to get some experience while I’m stuck in the suburbs.
This weekend is intimidating
I’m going to attend an ‘Entertainment Fair’ in Sacramento. It’s only been around for two years now and it’s this super interactive thing for folks interested in the film industry. Most of it sounds like it’s for actors, but there’s also going to be some reps from local production companies - even a couple from LA - and some other shit in regard to pretty much every variety of film production in one sense or another. There’s going to be a green screen set up that they’re going to let people act in front of. Since it’s sponsored mainly by a Talent Agency geared towards models and actors, I’m not surprised that most of it is, well, set up to attract actors.
I’m really nervous, but also fairly excited. I don’t give a shit about the green screen (I don’t want to act professionally - I’ve been in a play and done many a skit for classes and thoroughly enjoy it but if I really don’t want even the slightest chance of being one of those super famous actors whose face is slapped everywhere who can’t have any privacy, at all. That sounds fucking horrible. Anyway) I’ve spent all day going through the things I’ve written over the years, seeing if there’s anything worth trying to finish or fix up before this weekend to bring. I’m not even sure if I should bother with that, I don’t know how to format things properly as a spec script that will actually be given out to producers and the like. I’m probably overthinking it or trying to be too professional when this thing really feels more casual - I’m pretty sure it’s goal is simply to get people to start getting involved in film in the ares since there really isn’t all that much. I’m not sure if I’ll even have the opportunity to give anything out that’ll actually be paid attention to (even if it isn’t, it’s giving me a really good excuse to actually finish a fucking script), the only parts of this thing that they’ve been specific about have directly related to acting. There’s going to be representatives from the California Art Institute as well, which I’ve never really considered attending (It’s so fucking expensive) but I’ll definitely make a point to talk to them.
I’m starting to think I might be overthinking it, but I really don’t want to miss out on what could be a really good opportunity to make connections or just simply get my foot in the door, or at least pointed towards the right door.
Jonathan Franzen - Liking Is For Cowards - NYTimes.com
A related phenomenon is the transformation, courtesy of Facebook, of the verb “to like” from a state of mind to an action that you perform with your computer mouse, from a feeling to an assertion of consumer choice. And liking, in general, is commercial culture’s substitute for loving. The striking thing about all consumer products — and none more so than electronic devices and applications — is that they’re designed to be immensely likable. This is, in fact, the definition of a consumer product, in contrast to the product that is simply itself and whose makers aren’t fixated on your liking it. (I’m thinking here of jet engines, laboratory equipment, serious art and literature.)
But if you consider this in human terms, and you imagine a person defined by a desperation to be liked, what do you see? You see a person without integrity, without a center. In more pathological cases, you see a narcissist — a person who can’t tolerate the tarnishing of his or her self-image that not being liked represents, and who therefore either withdraws from human contact or goes to extreme, integrity-sacrificing lengths to be likable.
If you dedicate your existence to being likable, however, and if you adopt whatever cool persona is necessary to make it happen, it suggests that you’ve despaired of being loved for who you really are. And if you succeed in manipulating other people into liking you, it will be hard not to feel, at some level, contempt for those people, because they’ve fallen for your shtick. You may find yourself becoming depressed, or alcoholic, or, if you’re Donald Trump, running for president (and then quitting).
I mostly created this as a way to coherently vent and record what’s been going on in my life, but instead, I ended up updating my inactive for the past two or three years livejournal account with private entries that mostly consist of stream of consciousness crap that - while satisfying on an emotional level - really aren’t particularly useful in any way.
Saudade
Saudade is a Portuguese language word difficult to translate adequately, which describes a deep emotional state of nostalgic longing for something or someone that one was fond of and which is lost. It often carries a fatalist tone and a repressed knowledge that the object of longing might really never return.
Saudade has been described as a “vague and constant desire for something that does not and probably cannot exist … a turning towards the past or towards the future”. A stronger form of saudade may be felt towards people and things whose whereabouts are unknown, such as a lost lover, or a family member who has gone missing. It may also be translated as a deep longing or yearning for something which does not exist or is unattainable.
Saudade was once described as “the love that remains” or “the love that stays” after someone is gone. Saudade is the recollection of feelings, experiences, places or events that once brought excitement, pleasure, well-being, which now triggers the senses and makes one live again. It can be described as an emptiness, like someone ( e.g., one’s children, parents, sibling, grandparents, friends, pets) or something (e.g., places, things one used to do in childhood, or other activities performed in the past) that should be there in a particular moment is missing, and the individual feels this absence. In Portuguese, ‘tenho saudades tuas’, translated as ‘I have saudades for you’ means ‘I miss you’, but carries a much stronger tone. In fact, one can have ‘saudades’ of someone with which one is, but have some feeling of loss towards the past or the future.
In Brazil, the day of saudade is officially celebrated on January 30.
(via tamburinaa)
