I'm now more than a month sober. About a year ago it was that Covid-19 ravaged my family and me causing me to lose my first job in Tennessee and in early September my father as well. Kinda feels like a lost year. BUT I've got a new job, and in a way it feels like I'm staring over. A type of Tennessee, take two.
So how has the past month been for me? Well, for starters I've attended a TON of AA meetings. In those meeting I've taken a ton of notes. Maybe that's the writer in me coming out. But I think I'm up to like 10 pages of notes from people sharing at these meetings. Really encouraging to see people committed to improving their lives. Still don't have an AA sponsor -- and don't know if I ever will -- but these meeting are help keeping me from relapsing into drinking. Just so you know what kind of alcoholic I was; I was what I consider a binge drinker. My problem was one Budweiser would become 6 to 8. I was mostly drinking alone. And I was going out for drives in the country as I drank 6 packs.
Why divulge that? Well, because there are a lot of different forms of alcohol problems people have. Beer was my buddy, and it was getting worse. Thankfully, changes were made before a serious incident happened.
I recently got my "one month" chip at an AA meeting.
My big goal now is to stack a bunch of work checks together and rebuild my accounts. Since I didn't have insurance, I had some hefty bill from the ambulance and hospital stay I had after my mom called to the cops on me over fear of alcohol induced suicide on the 4th of July. That and being in and out of work over the past year ate away at my savings. And now I just wanna stack checks and rebuild myself financially.
Little by little, I guess is the best I can hope for these days. Gotta fight the desire to get it back all at once. The AA meetings help with that. Lotta recovering alcoholics stress patience and "working the program". That said I'm not sure how long I'll be in the "program". But for now I think that's best for me.
Still not excited about NE Tennessee. Can't think of anything I want to see in this state. The food here is for the most part AWFUL.
Creatively I've not been into it since I finished my last completed screenplay, So Go Back & Get Him; which I completed in late May. Getting back into Thars is still an uphill climb. Did start work on a story for a new script. It's a supernatural horror in the vein of...
Kinda strange that I'm endeavoring to do another horror script at the same time of year that I did my last one: Gravesite Crows. Hopefully this one, which I've tentatively named, Owen Decides; will turn out as well as my first slasher turned out. We'll see. Right now the difficulty I'm running into is mastering the driving antagonist of the story, who is an occultic witch who is bent on revenge against several about-to-graduate high school senior who were in her son's class. It's the witch's dabbling that opens the box for what I think will turn out to be the "secret sauce" that makes this a good, teen horror screenplay by the time I'm done with it.
I've got the broad strokes for a one-night horror story; it's just not all there yet. Welcome to the world of being a writer, which is constantly going up against the dilemma of taking initial ideas and fleshing them out into coherent stories. It's just usually going into a story I know the antagonist first. As I'm a believer that the antagonist drives the story and forces the protagonist to take action and become the hero by the end of the story. This time I have a better grasp of the lead team protagonist who I'm going to base on a guy I know over at Scriptshadow...
Will green witches be making a comeback in 2022? Be waiting for Owen Decides to find out!
So I'm still at it; working on being a better person, and definitely more a more responsible citizen. One step at a time. Still at it as a writer too, though these days I don't feel as driven as in days past.
Next post will either be on a rom-com issue I've been thinking about lately, or my primer for the 2022 NFL season. Was excited to see how my Seahawks were doing, until I watched their first pre-season game against the Pittsburgh Steelers and watched the Steelers 1st team offence go up and down the field on the Seahawks 1st team defense. I get that with Russell Wilson gone either Gino Smith or Drew Lock would have their struggles, but the defense? They looked AWFUL. Once again, no pass rush.
Sigh...
Maybe be a long year for my Seahawks in 2022, but l know I'm looking to finish out 2022 strong even if they're not. Talk to you again soon. Won't have to wait another month for my next post, I promise.