“You can’t fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal.” -WSB

I set these very high standards for myself, and constantly struggle to meet my own expectations. In one way, that’s good, because it keeps me motivated and prevents me from getting lazy or complacent. In another way, it makes it really hard for me to ever sit back and go, “Hey, I did a thing. Good for me.”

So looking back on the last week or so …

I’m not as productive as I need to be. I’m sleeping more, but not well. Nightmares are frustratingly common, even if I don’t clearly remember them when I wake up. Lots of snakes and floods. I have developed this generalized anxiety that’s sort of like a background hum in my life, and it’s getting so persistent, just ignoring the hum is starting to become a full-time thing. It’s exhausting. I am watching a lot of movies and TV, but I’m staying up really, really late and I’m not sure that’s particularly good for me. I’m reading every day, but not a whole lot.

I feel like I’m doing a lot of stuff, but I’m not getting anything done.

But I did make this dumb thing in gimp today, that is a thing where there wasn’t a thing before:

I took the source picture at Hollywood Forever Cemetery when Anne and I went to see the premiere of Outcast (it’s great and you should watch it). I was goofing around in gimp and with some filters, and trial and error, ended up with that image. I think it’s neat, like something that would be on a record sleeve, or a 1960s movie poster. If any of you who are clever and creative want to make something with it, I’d love to see what it inspires you to create.

The Niven Jazz Collection at the Internet Archive is phenomenal, and it was my soundtrack while I worked on this thing.

Oh, I had this realization: I’m creatively starving. So I know what the source of my anxiety is, and I know why I feel unhappy and frustrated. Now I just have to figure out what the thing to do is. Part of that incessant background hum is knowing that I can do almost anything, if I just do the fucking work, so I don’t know where to start.

But I have an idea … of sorts. So that’s a start.

My life reboot is going well. Though I make lots of jokes about how I’ve traded everything I liked in my life for water and exercise, I really do feel good. The changes I made to my life, which I’ve committed to maintaining, are making a positive difference in every area of my existence, and I love it.

I’m having a massive existential crisis about being an actor right now, but that’s a whole thing that I’m not going to get into in public until I’ve had more time to think about it, and talk about it with my friends who are other creative people.

But other than that whole thing, I’m happy. I’m taking good care of myself physically, emotionally, and mentally.

So that’s why I’m not going to any conventions this year, except a single one in England this October. This means I won’t be at San Diego Comicon, including w00tstock, or HopCon.

There are probably less than one hundred people in the world who care about that, but if you’re one of them, read on and I’ll tell you why.

“Hey, are you walking out?” I asked my friend.

“Yeah,” he said.

“I’ll walk out with you.”

He picked up his coat and script. I put my phone in my pocket and reached for my glasses, before I remembered that they were in my car.

We said goodbye to a pretty amazing person who I can’t name because of reasons, and headed down the hallway toward the parking lot.

When we got to the door, another person was coming in. He knew my friend, and said hello to him.

“What are you working on?” He asked my friend.

There was a long pause while my friend and I looked at each other. This project we’re on has been in production for a few months, and we record on it almost every week. He and I are regulars, and it’s fairly common for someone we both know to come in as a guest actor, surprising us both, because none of us are allowed to talk about this thing. In fact, one of my best friends worked on it a few weeks ago, and the day before I’d had a conversation like this with her:

Me: Do you want to get lunch tomorrow?

Her: I’m working until about 1pm, but I’m free after that.

Me: Oh, me too. What are you working on?

Her: I can’t say. NDA.

Me: Oh, I hear ya. I’m on something like that right now, too.

Her: Okay, I’ll text you when I’m done and we can meet up somewhere.

So after this long pause, my friend said, “It’s a super secret thing that we’re doing for [network].”

He looked at me. “Can we say [network]?”

“I’m pretty sure we can’t say that,” I said.

“You should probably forget that I said [network],” my friend said.

“Yeah, if it comes up for any reason, you definitely did not hear either of us say anything about [network], especially how we are working on a show for [network],” I added.

“I am now completely forgetting about [network],” he said.

We all looked at each other for a moment, and then we all laughed.

“This is so weird,” I said. “We’re all working on cool things, and I bet we know what they are, because we’ve either worked on them at another time, auditioned for them, or know someone who is on them … but none of us are allowed to talk about it for months or longer.”

We talked around what we’re doing a little bit, and then we all went our separate ways.

This is a cool and awesome thing that I get to do. I hear mean and dismissive things from dicks on the Internet all the time about how I don’t do anything and I’m lame and all that stuff, and for awhile, a big part of me believed it. But when I do things like this work today, and the thing I did a couple days ago, and this thing that I’m doing next week, I realize that they’re full of shit. I’m doing a lot of cool stuff, it’s just stuff that I can’t talk about.

This thing, though, in particular, is really great. I’m excited as hell to talk about it at some point in the Mysterious Future, probably after [network] announces it and then gets mad at me for announcing it myself three days later.

I’ve been pretty hard on myself recently, because I’m not making as many things as I want to make. Yes, I filmed a season of Tabletop, and did a bunch of voice work for various things, but I consider that professional work, which is different from personal creative stuff.

So this morning, while I was talking myself out of and into and back out of giving myself a grade for May’s Reboot status, I had this stupid idea that was amusing to me, and I made this:

I call it The Dark Side of the Moo, because I’m easily amused.

I’m sure I’m not the first person to do this, but that didn’t make it any less satisfying for me to draw and color it.