Reality, depression, mania, dreams, excitement, and all that bollocks...

Depressed.

Journaling about my own "stuff", one thing that's come up is that I traditionally got very excited over plans and what I expected to do in some distant future. I can clearly remember being so excited in my salad days about what I was going to be, and what I was going to be doing "when I was grown up". And here I am, grown up, and I've barely achieved those goals.

And the thing is, I'm not really (at the time of writing) drawn to do whatever it is I need to do to actually get the goals done. Making this movie is one of them. If I'm really honest, I don't actually want to do it. Or, at least, there's a battle inside me between the person or people who DO want to make it, and the person or people who DON'T.

On some level, I just want to make some self indulgent wanky old video diary-cum-documentary about me and my struggle with creativity. I certainly can't think of anything right now that's all that interesting, commercial, or even congruent with myself and my values. Back in the days when I thought a great movie had this or that happening in it, then it was easy: I knew what I wanted. Now, at least artistically, I don't really know.

So far I've done some not all that clever little mock ads just to get me familiar with using a camera and editing software. Now I want to actually write a story. But that's where I've come unstuck, it seems. I just don't feel I have a story inside me. I just feel I want to be negative, destructive, and petulantly depressed. I want to be self indulgent, self critical, and ridicule everything I've done in my life.

Of course, the mania was something that fueled the original daring, and desire to do this thing in the first place. But I don't feel at all connected to that mania right now, and I wish I were, because it would, I'm sure, propel me into doing something rather clever - or at least propel me into making a bad project, from which I would learn so much.

This sitting around on my arse does nothing at all.

If only the excitement would hang on during the times when one loses sight of the goal, and has to get up and exercise daily, and keep up the painfully tedious business of staying self disciplined.

I know what I want: to have already made this film. To have already made a shitload of money, gained respectability, fame, experience and wisdom. And, by so doing, be in that wonderful Elysium where all is easy, work comes plentifully, and I don't have to take shit from anyone.

At nearly 52, I kinda think that should have been worked out by now.

But hey! I'm an extremely late bloomer, that's all. Different from ordinary folk. Batty, eccentric.

What I need to play is the original, unique, undiscovered genius card.

Not as though anyone's ever thought of that before, of course...

But I do think I'm a one man show. I like to do it all myself: probably because I want to tell MY story MY way.

But do I have a story to tell any more? It doesn't really feel like it. Besides, any story told a thousand times does get tedious, whatever it is. I can believe even the men who went to the moon get tired of telling each detail of the story. There are bound to be other subjects they want to get on to.

I remember meeting an English actor by the name of Victor Spinetti who is, or was, known as a true raconteur. That was his schtick: he told stories, in a highly amusing, gossipy, older gay man way. Personally, I found him utterly boring, but I could see through the schtick, and to the lonely man underneath it all. I saw in him the quintessential lonely, never-quite-famous actor, who himself told me that he "could have been Jack Lemmon" had he made certain career decisions differently. But he stood in his elegant Brighton house, all nicely furnished, and the bitterness poured off him like cheap, Woolworths' perfume.

Could I make a movie about someone like that?

It's vaguely there in my head. But applying it: that's the difficult part. That's where the slog is. That's where the daily grind and frustration is.

And can I really be bothered? Again, the movie is perfect while it's still in my head.

Just as delusional "love" exists for so many people, delusions of possibility exist in so many people's minds, because they think they can do things, but thinking and dreaming you can are very different to getting off your arse and making it happen.

I just have to get through the feelings of embarrassment of doing crap, whether it's crap wedding videos, crappy little videos and commercials, or anything else that I think is second or third rate, amateurish, or just plain naff.

The more I keep at this, the closer I get to finding a style, finding my voice, and finding whatever it is that actually WORKS.

And if it means entries like this every now and then, so be it.