Inventory

"For all her careful inventory of wires, cables and connections, there is a screw loose that is not accounted for." -- official psychological assessment of _________________ See my blog on trolls and the definition - official versus crazy definition - to get an idea of the person of which I speak here. I left out one of the things this person said in her last missive. She said that I was "addicted to negative excitement." I would say - were we talking - physician heal thyself. /////////////////////////^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^#################### I'm not sure how graceful it would be to lay out all of my medical history to demonstrate how unappealing "negative excitement" is to me, and it seems like something you hear 12 step program people talk about. I have however already blogged or posted in the past about an aneurysm I survived around the end of 2011 with a coil procedure at St. Michael's in Toronto. My scans show that there is one branch filled with coil to block it and another branch with just one thread of coil as a lead which they have to monitor now just once a year and I am encouraged to watch blood pressure is the most likely issue that can cause it to leak. Even when I prepare a film project or something else that involves a certain measure of stress, I want to be as organized as possible to avoid a disaster or misunderstanding 100% of the time. The square peg is my storyboarded movie and the round hole it goes into is the nearly zero amount of money in the budget. Meanwhile, I pay the rent with the same basic security job I've had for 14 years which from time to time involves a knack for keeping calm and managing stress and de-escalating a situation that might be brewing. So, no. I don't seek negative excitement. If I take the time to read something in my news feed and something strikes me as left out or not being said, that's when I'll fill out the space for comment beside my face that appears under the link or post. /////////////////////////^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^#################### Some people have a shockingly childish response to having anything questioned, and instead of engaging in a sane and constructive manner they might choose to view any question or fact-check as popping their balloon. If someone posts an article singing the praises of Caitlin Gender... I mean Jenner... I can leave that sort of thing be. I would know to not even bother clicking on the article to read it, so I will not have invested any time and won't have anything to say about it, having never watched a Kardashian reality show or any spin-off. I recall maybe one article about Sense8 the new Wackowski series. Another guy in the thread said he thought it was beating people over the head with its politics and agenda, and I commented that his remark is the only thing that might give me pause but that Lana and her brother Andy can direct and their skills are the reason I will watch. This one simple remark may be considered by the person praising the show to be an example of "troll" post by her poor definition of it. If a show is preaching to the converted at best and bashing people over the head with an over-ripe subtext or surface-text, that can indeed count against it. I'm a bit worried that there might be a pocket of people who are very vocal who are political first and willing to throw craft and art under the bus for the sake of pushing a social trend. Arthur C. Clarke's book Childhood's End has a section called The Golden Age in which society has gotten rid of its ills and concerns and conflicts but art is bland if not non-existent. We do live in a world where inequality is a fact of life and there are bullies. The difference is who is jockeying for those dominant positions. /////////////////////////^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^#################### I find even when I have been in the middle of a fight as the third person, in the cross-fire, my nature is to be the luke warm water that attempts to not be touched by the nervous energy or agitation of the others. I think even if there is "chemistry" with a woman on a date, my nature to diffuse tension is still there and it has caused the false read that I am not excited. It's a difficult thing to work around. I strive to remain in the centre of the wheel of life where there is less violent movement. Some people - especially performers or those truly addicted to excitement - are willing to stay on the outer rim of the wheel where the ups and downs are extreme. Any risk I take has to be fairly well calculated, and after some naive risks in the past I am even more likely to get things in writing and make sure nobody has unspoken expectations about a project or what might happen. I am likely to publish some of my journals and recollections of things going wrong in filmmaking, and maybe something separate about what goes wrong in security, although the latter might just be my movie about security guard work. I agree with the idea that what you are most afraid will happen already has, and so there is no point in fearing it. Most stress can be unexpectedly caused by people reading you as too calm (because you are managing stress) and taking it upon themselves to try to shake you up. Sometimes this can be anticipated and a preemptive conversation might avert an escalation. In any case, if you have no legal recourse when the smoke has cleared it might be best to calmly seek extra-legal recourse. If you can. Some of us don't have the compartmentalization to be as cold blooded as necessary. But I still try to keep my cool.