me and aaron kiefer, c. 2002

There was a time, not so long ago, when I enjoyed acting. I’d like to think that I know a bit about myself and the way that I work, and so when I say I enjoyed acting, I mean that there was a point in my life where me — the guy you would see every day — was honest and open about himself. Acting, then, became a great way to inhabit the minds of people I’d never think to inhabit, people who had wildly different thoughts than I did, people who weren’t as honest and open as me, who tried very hard to obfuscate and keep secrets. But me, Josh Belville, just a silly guy with broken glasses and a very general lack of fashion sense, I was here, and I was me. Acting became a way to fuel emotions that I might not necessarily have on a day-to-day basis, to explore some inner workings that I was familiar with, but didn’t spend my life exacerbating, simply because I didn’t have to. There’s a proverb that goes, “Happy is the man who has no story to tell.” That was me. There was no facade, no mask betraying inner feelings. There was just me.

But now, as I’m writing this, and as I spend time delving into the double life of Don Draper (yes I’m watching Mad Men, and yes I’m watching it quickly), it occurs to me that my life has changed. No longer am I the man who is happy to be honest and open about himself and his life. It’s affected my work. Now I wear a mask every day, which I don’t even remove when I’m therapy; most of my time there is spent talking about other people, rarely about myself. So when I get on stage to perform, the words are meaningless — they’re not real, and I’m not real. The two cancel each other out. There’s no need to wear a mask when you’re already wearing one.

I mean, people get in this business for a variety of reasons. Some do it because they just want to be seen, acknowledged, loved by scores of strangers in a dark room. Some people desire the disconnect from themselves, because their personal lives are tumultuous and require distance. And some people, people like me, do it because our regular lives are relatively empty, meaningless, and donning someone else’s persona for a couple of hours a night is just a lot of fun. An added bonus is that we share a human experience for a group of people in a dimly lit theater, who may find themselves transformed by the end of the performance, as much as we were transformed in the beginning.

Performance is about the simultaneous act of giving yourself up for a character, and giving yourself into a character. It is a transformation unseen in any other art form. When Anna Deavere Smith performed her play Fires in the Mirror, she brought that transformation to light, and some people didn’t like it. Say what you will about the play, her contribution to theatre is one of illumination of the act itself. She was herself being characters. The incomplete transformation, the ability to be yourself and be the character. No man is Hamlet, but every actor who has performed Hamlet was Hamlet.

My problem is: I can’t invest in being Hamlet because I’m too busy being somebody else. Someone who is not me. Someone who doesn’t find joy in the world like he used to.

I guess what I’m saying is: I’m unhappy. There. You’re welcome.

It’s a funny thing, to take a relatively arbitrary means of establishing time and use it to figure out if you had a good or bad time during that time. I’ve been alive almost 29 years now and every year I try to think back and wonder if I had a good time or not. I think I’m kind of an accidental Buddhist. A lot of people are stuck in the past, or fantasize about the future, but I’m pretty okay being in the present. So when I try to think back on 2011, I can’t ultimately say if it was a good year or a shitty year. Am I happy? Not really. My current circumstances are lacking in something that I don’t quite understand yet. But happiness isn’t something you should try to maintain for such a long period of time. People who pursue happiness like that are doomed to never see happiness when it arrives. (On the other hand, people who pursue despair find it in abundance. Funny how that works.)

Am I content? Yeah. Of course! I have a roof over my head, clean water, food when I want it, a delightful woman who enjoys sharing her time with me, and, of course, the internet and enough money to furnish my new computer building hobby. I have no reason to be unhappy in a general sense. Specifically, yes, there are aspects of my life that I wish I could make better. I wish I had as much control over my impulses. Being caught in the present makes for awful choices sometimes. I wish I could save money. I want to lose weight. There are a lot of t-shirts in my closet that I just can’t wear anymore, and it’s getting to a point where I can either buy new shirts, or lose weight, and I’d like to do the latter.

I also feel creatively stagnant, so I’d like to work on that. I have to just create things, even if they suck. Part of the process is honing your skills so that you get better. You can’t get better if you don’t try. Be prepared to fail. I have to be prepared to fail and possibly be humiliated. It happens. Welcome to the world. You can’t spend your entire life not trying to be the best you can be. The best for you, I should add. You don’t have to be the best for anybody but you. Don’t spend your life trying to please others, just please yourself and that will please others.

Anyway, I’ve thought a lot about this blog recently, because I started it three years ago in response to having graduated college and not having a job. It became an outlet for ideas and thoughts that were stuck in my brain. Over the course of time I moved to Portland, found a job, and became entrenched in the “new old routine” of going to work full time every day for three years. My creativity waned to the point of near non-existence; every February my FAWM¹ output has declined, and now I don’t even write or record music anymore. Obviously these blog posts have been more infrequent, not because I couldn’t write them — I had the time — but because I didn’t want to. I had no energy, no desire. No passion. I spent three years making money, and I came out of it with nothing but money. I’m not really depressed about the whole thing, just more in shock: what did I do with my life? Why did I allow myself to stagnate? Why did I not grasp the multiple opportunities around me, in this bigger city where no one knows who I am? I could’ve done just about anything, but instead I took the first job I got and ran with it for too long. Again, not depressed about it. I mean, it helped pay for rent and food and water and warmth, and even more on top of that. It allowed me to travel back to Boise and see my friends, to attend concerts and movies, and to buy parts for my new computer. My job didn’t buy me happiness, but it did allow me to purchase things that would bring happiness. And that was good enough. For a while.

But! Now I’m in graduate school, and I have no job, and I hope that the money that I have and the money I will get through unemployment insurance will be enough to sustain me until I graduate. But since I have a little more time on my hands I figured I would make one of those New Years Resolutions and state right here, right now, that I intend to write more in this blog. Every weekday, in fact. Monday through Friday. Maybe even Saturday or Sunday! Who knows! Every day will have a different topic, cleverly alliterated for your enjoyment: Music Monday, Tech Tuesday, Weigh in Wednesday, Theatre Thursday, and Fiction Friday. Monday I will post a song or two that I’ve been enjoying lately; Tuesday I will update the world on my computer builds, or some new thing I learned or was interested in, etc; Wednesday I will update my goal of losing weight and getting in shape over 2012 (obviously I will weigh myself every Wednesday, hence the title); Thursday I will review a play I saw or read; and Friday I will post a bit of fiction that I wrote, whether it be a play, short story, or ongoing serial. I might include a Special Topics Saturday or Sunday just because I like to talk about video games, but there is no day of the week that starts with V (not in English, at least).

Yes, I am doing this. Yes, I am starting this Monday. I may even do podcasts for Saturday. Yes, I will be doing this while attending graduate school, so if I slip every now and then, it’s because I’m writing essays about Plautus². But hopefully I can buffer by writing posts on the weekend and queuing them up. Whatever! I’m going to do it.

My three main goals for 2012 are the following:

1. Return to my undergrad weight and toning: 215 lbs (at least. I’d like to go further than this).

2. Write the aforementioned blog posts. Be on time with them as much as I can.

3. Be more creative. Write music, write stories and plays and poems.

And all I ask of you is to read, enjoy, comment, and maybe give me a hundred dollars. Is that so much to ask?!

Hope you all have a fantastic New Year. Let’s have some fun before the Mayan calendar ends and we all die in the horribly fiery death maw of the World Eater, Xtloclixtli.

Well, they’re right about that. GBS writes really long plays. Dude likes to talk, what can I say.

But I’ve found that immediately after starting school and reducing my amount of work time, my spirits have brightened considerably. I find my mind is clearer, my body lighter, my faith in humanity restored a bit. School is fun. Learning is fun. Knowledge is amazing, wisdom even more amazing. Moving is good, too. The ability to go to a class, then walk to the bus, then walk to work, then take the bus home — the breaking up of monotony is what life is all about.

I didn’t realize how bored I was until I started doing things. And then I realized that Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, etc, they’re all distractions. They’re fun, and I love to use them, but I hardly do anymore, because I’m busy. Busy with LIFE. Which is a lot more fun.

So … consider that an explanation for why I’m not around as much anymore.

I had worked the late shift the night before, and was planning on sleeping in to, oh, two, three PM, but instead was rudely awakened by my father at about ten-thirty in the morning, shouting downstairs toward my basement door, “Josher! Wake up! It’s World War III!”

The next minute or so is crystal clear in my mind: so many jumbled thoughts at once. Mydad wasn’t making light of the situation; hell, for all I know he really did think World War III was coming, or was here, or something. I’m sure a lot of people felt the same way. But to be awoken from a deep sleep by your father, a man you put a lot of trust and respect into, telling you that a war was happening, and that it was world wide, well, that will freak you out. And so I woke up half-asleep, in a stupor, scared shitless that they would reinstate the draft (which I, like every other eighteen year old male in this country, forcibly signed up for) and that I would be sent off to wherever the hell they were fighting with an M1 Garand and an Army helmet with a pack of Lucky Stripes strapped to it.

Hestitantly, I crawled up the stairs and walked over to the TV, and saw that my worries were not as bad as I had thought. Though what was happening was horrible.

Looking at my LiveJournal entries from that day, I saw that I wrote a lot of misinformation (I even wrote about a fake Nostradamus quote that “predicts” 9/11. At this point, is Nostradamus even real? It seems like every quote attributed to him is fake). Five thousand people dead? Three thousand? And then, the very next day, a post about buying CDs from Fred Meyer. So I guess that’s proof right there that terrorism doesn’t work. Especially on the other side of the country.

I had never seen the World Trade Center, though my brother Russ had, and got photos ontop of one of them. I had never even been to New York, or the east in general. I was sheltered, and seeing planes slam into buildings didn’t affect me as it did everyone over there. Still, patriotism ran rampant in the days following, as did, for some of us, the onslaught of national introspection.

Now, it’s ten years later, and the brave men and women who went through hell trying to save people in those towers can’t even get their health problems caused by the dust and smoke covered under their insurance. The number of innocent civilians killed in Iraq and Afghanistan in the past ten years is more than 1000% of the number on 9/11. The amount of money George W Bush spent on mindless war is so big, it’s impossible to understand, so we almost forget about it.

Talk about terrorism.

As of 2009, I have owned a dual core processor machine, with 4GB of ram and a 500GB hard drive. It is called Magrageeves (I give my computers weird names) and at the time it was a godsend. My old single-core computer, Albatross, was getting very, very old, and had experienced a bad static electricty problem oh, nearly six years ago now, and thus would freeze up randomly, forcing me to restart frequently. The only reason I stayed with that computer is because I was too poor to buy a new one. It was college, what can you do. So the purchase of a brand new system was exciting to me, but also kind of nervewracking. I had to buy something relatively cheap, but something that could do what I wanted, namely play video games. So I opted for a dual core, because quad cores at that time were super expensive. Five hundred gigabytes, I thought, would last me forever. How do you fill up 500GB of space? The cost of Magrageeves was $470.

Later on I purchased a “bare-bones” computer kit for $200. An AMD Phenom quad core processor, 2GB of ram that I upgraded to 4GB, a 500GB hard drive, power supply, a shitty case, etc etc. I was supposed to put it together myself. I was nervous. See, Albatross had been sitting in the garage for months now, collecting dust, and at one point I decided to turn it on. I turned it on and experienced a series of beeps and no Windows loading. After some investigating, I quickly discovered that Albatross was Dead, a lifeless hunk of scrap metal. So I did something that I would do frequently with toys as a child: I took it apart. God damn it felt good. I hadn’t taken apart anything for a long time, because at some point it became apparent to my developing brain that while I was good at taking things apart and investigating them, I was horrible at putting them back together. I distinctly remember the piles of parts of Transformer toys I disassembled and then kind of half-heartedly reassembled, and how they looked nothing like they used to. I then said, Well, let’s stop doing this.

So I took apart Albatross and looked at what made it tick. Of course, what was in that box and what is in my newer computers is a little different. Better technology, more upgraded thingymajigs. I don’t know the name of everything, but I know generally what goes where, how to plug in things, etc. And I used that information along with basic instructions to build the bare-bones computer. It was painless! The only issue is that the hard drive light doesn’t light up, despite plugging the right connecting pin (or whatever that’s called). But I did it. I constructed something. It made me feel good. It was as close to working on a car as I’ll ever get.

Now my plan is to upgrade! I was going to upgrade my dual-core to a quad-core behemoth, but thankfully through some research I found that the motherboard on that computer can’t handle more than 4GB of ram. So the next idea is to upgrade the quad core and make it the main computer in my house (the other being a guest computer/recording computer). I can add a 1TB hard drive, a shiny new ATI Radeon graphics card, and two sticks of 4GB ram (this mobo can go up to 8GB) for under $200, though I’ll probably have to chip in and get a new computer fan, too.

Oh, and randomly, I discovered that Albatross’s 80GB hard drive still works, and so I put it in the quad-core machine. Honestly, I’ve never had a hard drive fail on me, ever. People must be pushing those things like mad to get them to burn out on them.

I know this goes against the general patois of this blog, but I’ve become quite proud of my ability to deal with computers like this, and I can’t wait to buy the parts to upgrade my quad core. There’s something about getting your hands dirty and putting stuff together yourself that makes you more invested in those things. For some it’s gardens, for others it’s cars, and for me it’s computers. So there! Deal with it! *sunglasses fall onto my face*

“TAURUS: The year is almost half over, Taurus. Shall we sum up the first part of 2011 and speculate about the adventures that may lie ahead of you in the next six months? The way I see it, you’ve been going through a boisterous process of purification since last January. Some of it has rattled your soul’s bones, while some of it has freed you from your mind-forged manacles. In a few short months, you have overseen more climaxes and shed more emotional baggage than you had in the past three years combined. Now you’re all clean and clear and fresh, and ready for a less exhausting, more cheerful kind of fun.”

Astrology, you son of a bitch, how do you know exactly what is going on in my life? Granted, I think when he says “last January,” he means January 2011, but I took it to mean January of 2010, which, if so, is exactly when I started going through a “purifcation,” if you will, and February is when I started therapy, and I don’t know, this horoscope just works perfectly for me right now. I’ve been in Portland for three years, and in the past year and a half I’ve had more ups and downs than I can count. And while I don’t really feel “clear and fresh,” I do feel ready for a less exhausting, more cheerful kind of fun.

Anyway. Just wanted to post this for posterity.

This morning, my girlfriend discovered why she was having such difficulty sleeping. “I think it’s the dogs across the street,” she said. “They’re always barking, and since we have the window open, I can hear them and they wake me up.”

I would say the same thing, but I’m too busy being woken up by my damn cat every two hours. She jumps beside me on the bed and meows me awake, and if I don’t respond to her, she walks on my chest and stands there like she own the goddamn place.

See, she’s kind of spoiled. She likes to sleep under the covers. Typically, when Kait and I sleep, she goes under, starts pawing the fitted bedsheet like she’s making a nest, and then flops onto her side or even her back, waiting for us to pet her and tell her she’s cute. She knows this. She KNOWS. And then we pet her and go to sleep. This is when she escapes from under the covers and starts running around, chasing things, and generally fucking around. Why she chooses this time, I have no idea. But eventually she wears herself out and she comes back up to sleep. Now, she sleeps OVER the covers. Don’t ask me why.
She also likes to sleep nestled between either my girlfriend or my legs. Like, if I’m laying on my back and my legs are parted, even a little bit, she nestles up in between them, probably because it’s warm and comforting. But for me it means I cannot change my position in the bed. Ever, unless she moves or I move her, and if I move her I feel like a dick.

Then, before it’s even light outside, she jumps on the bed and meows in my face. How do I placate you, Jowers? What do I do? Do you want food? Attention? What magical incantation shouldst I speak to allow thee the peace thou requirest?

Animal behaviorists say you can’t give the animals the attention they seek in situations like this because then they’ll always seek it. But how can you not give attention to a cat that is meowing in your face? Ignore it? What if I ignore it and one morning she meows and I don’t hear because I’ve ignored it so much that I sleep through it, only this time she’s meowing because the goddamn house is on fire, and she’s warning me but nothing will wake me from my sweet reverie, and I die in a house fire?!

I guess I’ll just be sleepy all day, then. :\

I eat a lot, is what I’m trying to say. And I must thank some kind of throttle in my body that’s keeping me from ballooning to obesity. I’m gaining weight, sure, but not too fast. I’ve gained about sixty pounds in three years. Not terrible, but I feel the effects of it. Increased lethargy, apathy, apparently I snore a lot when I sleep now. These are all things that I want to fix. I want my energy back. I want to feel happy and content and relaxed. I understand my job doesn’t help this, but I know that I control the things that go into my body, and so I want to take steps to fix what I’ve been breaking for years now.

So my first logical and pragmatic step is to stop snacking at work. That is why I’m writing this blog post, because I’m trying to focus my mind on something else. Of course, writing about snacking doesn’t really help, but it’s better than thinking about snacking.

It’s a weird psychological dependency that I have brought upon myself. Years of sitting in front of a computer screen, eating Doritos or Cheetos or whatever the hell was fattening and delicious. I honestly wish I could get rid of this desire like I got rid of my desire for soda. But, comfort food is comfort food, and I feel good binging on junk food. I’m trying to change my mindset about that, but it takes time, and I keep falling back.

It’s a weird feeling. I’m not even that hungry, but I want to eat. I guess this is what alcoholics feel like, huh?

Wait until lunch, wait until lunch, wait until lunch…

Slowly, I ride in between the woman and her kid, and as I do, she looks at me and says, chock full of Portland passive-aggressiveness: “Maybe you want to say ‘On your left’ or ‘right’ when you pass?”

To which I laugh and say, “Sorry.”

And as I’m riding away, she continues, “Maybe next time?”

Here is my rebuttal, which, of course, I thought of much too late: Hey lady, when you see a bike riding down the street towards you and your child, maybe, instead of making me guess whether to ride to the left, the right, or the middle of your precious family, you MOVE YOUR FUCKING KID OUT OF THE WAY. Who knows how fast I might’ve hit that turn? Who knows where I would’ve gone? Should you expect every cyclist to say “LEFT” when they pass you? Cause you shouldn’t. I certainly would’ve said “On your left” if I could’ve PASSED LEFT. I would’ve said “On your right,” too, but guess what? YOUR FAMILY WAS IN THE ENTIRE STREET. What do you want me to do, hop up onto the sidewalk and then back onto the street, wasting my time and energy, and potentially damaging my bike, so you and your loved ones can enjoy the entire shitty street to yourself? What would’ve happened if a fucking motorcycle flew by? Would you sarcastically insist that the biker put on their turn signal when they passed by? Would you chide them for being in your golden walkway known as Oregon St?

I didn’t give you notice, by the way, because YOU SAW ME RIGHT BEHIND YOU. YOU SAW ME RIGHT BEHIND YOU! YOU SAW ME! MOVE YOUR KID OUT OF THE WAY! Don’t use him as a test for bicyclists! “Will this man say the correct words, or will my child become roadkill? Find out tonight, on When Parents Don’t Care What Happens to Their Children.”

I slowed down, I waited to see if you would ask your child to move out of the way, or you move, or you acknowledge my existence, and when you didn’t, and he didn’t seem like he was going anywhere, I slowly rode in between the two of you. Look, I don’t know if your kid is a saint or the next Ted Bundy, but a first impression led me to believe that he was pretty Chill, and wasn’t going to jump into my path or throw the Chuck It at me or jump on my face like a zombie, so I wasn’t worried about hurting him. I’ll admit, okay, I will admit, I probably should’ve said, “Comin’ through!” or “Riding down the middle!” or “Maybe you should move your kid out of the way, you idiot!” but instead I slid by silently. I’ll give you that. But, also, maybe, um, maybe IT’S A FUCKING STREET. Maybe when people with wheels come a rolling you should get out of the way, because you have no idea the condition of my bicycle, and you have no idea of the condition of a person’s automobile, yeah? I know, pedestrians have the right of way, but I’m pretty sure that doesn’t include walking in the middle of the street.

Okay, I think I’m done ranting. I’ll be sure to shout “GET THE FUCK OUT OF THE WAY” next time I’m riding my bicycle.

This past couple of years have been eye opening in a lot of ways. I’m surprised, first and foremost, at how easy it is to go from having 12 to 14 hour days of rehearsal, study, and exercise, to 8 hours of work and then nothing. Well, nothing is not exactly true. I do things. And lately I have finally been doing things to better my situation — I am going to graduate school at Portland State University this fall. Yes. Graduate school. Finally. Two years attempting to secure a Masters of Science in Theatre Arts. “Science?” you ask. “What about a Master of Arts?” Well, according to PSU, an MA is more for literary people, while an MS is more for actors and performers. I’m going that route. My ultimate goal is to get an MFA in Theatre somewhere else, after I get the MS. I just need a boost. I feel like everything I’ve learned at BSU is sloughing off of me like dead skin. The cores are there, but I’m not strong, I’ve lost my slim physique, I can’t concentrate like I used to. I don’t know if that’s from working like a Normal Person or what.

I’ve been thinking a lot about my sedentary lifestyle, my lack of serious goals or ambitions. The past two years have been spent trying desperately to enjoy something that I enjoyed doing already. Music has waned to almost nonexistence. Those stories are dead. I don’t write nearly as much as I used to. Twitter has sapped me of my expanded ideas — everything must be put within 140 characters or else no one will read it. This is a truth that has yet to really sink in on the world, but it’s true.

The things that I want to do — podcasting, acting, general performance-related things — are excited in my brain, but numb in my actions. Aside from pursuing grad school and being in the ensemble of an upcoming Romeo & Juliet set at Milepost 5 (which just so happens to be a few blocks from my house), I haven’t done shit. Ideas flick by me but never settle, probably because they understand that I’m not in a place to actually utilize these ideas. I grab bits and pieces but my body and my mind know that this is not a good time to focus on that sort of thing. I have other, bigger things to focus on, like health and happiness, things that will beget ideas and creativity. Taking care of yourself is rewarded, I promise.

Well, okay, that’s not entirely true. Pursuit of passion, I suppose, will be rewarded. Ernest Hemingway wasn’t very happy but he wrote some (arguably) good books¹. Beethoven apparently was a huge curmudgeon but he wrote some amazing music. It seems that people generally aren’t happy when they’re doing their best work. Or they’re on drugs. Maybe I should just get some drugs. I’d live a shorter life but I’d have some good material, yeah?

It’s May, it’s less than a week till my birthday, I’m going to be twenty-eight, and I am going to use this summer. I am going to take vacations and use my time to create things. Fall and winter can be so devastating in this stupid town. It’s really more than just the constant gray. In Idaho, we have weeks of inversion, where the cloud cover dipped down into the valley, making the cities thick with fog and a gross smell of industry. I remember these inversions clearly (so to speak), and never did I feel as depressed as I have during the months of rain and gray of Portland.

I have guaranteed myself two more years of living here², and then I’m off to an MFA program or something. Who the hell knows. I’d like to write a book. I’d love to finish the Quake Saga. I love acting, I want to continue doing that. I also like recording and making podcasts. There’s all kinds of avenues and I’m just sitting here twiddling my thumbs, expecting things to happen to me or for me. That’s just got to stop. It’s time to stop worrying about the overcast Portland sky, and to start Getting Shit Done.

I say this a lot, but I realize now that it should be more of a mantra than a one time thing. Keep saying it. Get Shit Done. Get Shit Done. Get Shit Done. Then maybe it actually will get done.