Vol 5: The way I see it

Goddamn.

I'm miserable. I've had a run of bad luck recently, that's the only real way to explain it. To borrow the title of a recent movie, the past week has been a "series of unfortunate events." This didn't become apparent until Friday, when my headspace totally changed from after Thursday's exhausting improv tournement. And where to I begin?

I guess the proper place to start would be to say "we sucked balls at Reach yesterday" but that's not the big reason. Our performance was one of our worst ever, especially considering (*big egotistical moment coming up here) I was there. The problem as I see it is a bunch of questions that don't really apply to our individual skills and there's really nothing you can do to combat that. that, and I was going hog-wild with my guesses when somebody on my team probably should have taken it from me. I sometimes feel like I'm as much of a liability as an asset. For every two questions I answer correctly, I randomly guess one wrong, or just blurt out something that it flat-out inaccurate and embarass myself. I don't care. I'm getting tired of Reach. I was sick to my stomach yesterday, pent up in this strange school (Nelson High) and all about miserable.

We didn't make it in Improv. I wasn't surprised to hear the news, but it might've cheered me up after Friday to hear we were going to compete last night. According to Emma, even Cliff, a member of the high-ranking Bateman team, felt the scoring was unfair and that not only should WOSS have made it, but that there were also teams that should not have. Cliff is a good guy - he works with Emma, used to do Reach (that's how I know him,) and is damn funny onstage.

Okay, so that's two things that got me down, but it's not even the full story of my recent misery. Suffice it to say, I now really know how Matthew, Chris' character from Night Sessions feels. And if you didn't see Night Sessions (or weren't in it,) then maybe you don't know what that means. Matthew's character was a teenager who fell victim to cruel, unrequited love, and had his heart rudely broken when he saw the girl he loved making out with this other guy. Fancy that: I wrote that, then it happened to me. Maybe I should start writing about guys who actually get the girls, if my words are going to have this magic prophetic ability.

But for all this heartbreak, all this bad luck and this losign streak I'm on, I'm not going to get down. Yeah, this is a revolutionary concept for me, I'm prepared just to keep moving instead of sitting in one place. No, I'm not happy. I don't know what could cheer me up or when I might be open to the idea of being happy again, but I can at least accept hey: shit happens. And even when it all appears to happen at the same time, the best you can do is just move past it. It happened, nothing you can do, so let go. Hey, I'm a Buddhist. The cause of suffering is desire, I desired, ergo I must suffer. Don't do the crime, etc. Haha. See? I can laugh. A little bit. I would not be "Shootin'" Scotto if I were not resilient after all that I've been through. After all, it just gives me another chapter in my much-delayed, much-ignored book about girls.

To reflect my pain, I edited Thursday's post into "4.5," a revised version of 4, with all the embarassing bits that upset me edited out. Perhaps someday, (probably) I'll put the original back, but not for now. I'm to exposed.

I'm prepared to let this one go. There are other fish in the sea, and plenty of girls in the world. Or so I've been told; I haven't met too many of them and the ones I know are all unavailable, but somebody told me they're out there.

I am smiling. 2005 has been a shitty year so far, but I'm smiling for whatever masochistic reason. At least I still have you, blog.

I bought Almost Famous and Lost in Translation yesterday at Blockbuster, as part of a "2 for $30" deal. I got to the parking lot before I realized how much I had paid - the total was $41.88. That's not right. So I went to the manager and he gladly reimbursed me the $6 and change of which I'd been robbed.

Some idiot once said that life isn't really bad, jsut a series of things, some good, some bad, and that you've got to learn to sort 'em out. Oh wait, that idiot was me.

Good night, keep on rockin'
Scotto