Dear TV: Stop Making the Blacks the Problems

So I watched the black guy die on The Walking Dead, not as fullfilling as I'd hoped, but satisfying.

This girl sounds like a pompous ass...wait...

I guess I wrote this in my useless Media Crit class in grad school while applying for some fellowship. That teacher was terrible and we approached our Dean about it. Then, for a whole uncomfortable HOUR AND A HALF the teacher wanted to 'talk' to us about what's wrong and then started to cry. That cost me $2500 and I didn't get the fellowship, obviously.

Enjoy:


Charity A. Thomas was born in Washington D.C. and raised on the southside of Chicago. She attended The University of Chicago Laboratory High School where she was an award winning television columnist on the U-High Midway and she discovered her passion for the media and writing. After graduating from Howard University with a BA in Radio/TV/Film (film major/ theater minor), with a semester at Columbia University in New York, she moved back to New York and began working in film production. She worked the grueling hours on idiotic music videos as a production assistant, production coordinator, production manager, wardrobe assistant, 2nd 2nd AD, and make-up “girl”, before settling on being The Art Department Coordinator (caps intentional) on commercials (and the occasional music video because her money tree has yet to come into full bloom).

In 2001, after her roommate and best friend joined a cult leaving her with a multitude of bills during a slow production period, Charity decided to begin graduate school. She expects to graduate in May 2003 with a Masters in Media Studies. With that degree she will become a media critic and the voice of the pseudo disenfranchised group- thinkers. In between all of this excitement, she writes. She’s an eccentric poet (published in AIM Magazine and various small friend run endeavors), an apocalyptic playwright, a brilliant essayist, and… a screenwriter. She’s sure there are going to be very professional, even scholarly, biographies submitted to this fellowship program and in being true to a promise she made herself… is going to write this “biography” as she feels it. She’s completely aware that this might cost her the fellowship… but that’s life. This is how she writes. She’s honest and true. She believes her purpose is to illuminate truth. Writing is the way she does that. It is her catharsis and she still believes that when you do what you love… the truth of it comes out. She wants to participate in this fellowship to attempt to find an outlet to let her voice be heard. She’s very appreciative of the opportunity and doesn’t want to appear flippant, but as arrogant and vain as she is… she’s not too big on shameless self promotion. She believes the work will find it’s way to the right people at the right time and it says more about her than any “biography” could. She’s a Leo who loves yoga (both physically and spiritually), reading, listening to jazz, shamelessly promoting her friends artistic endeavors and she hates referring to herself as “she”.



Jesus, what a tool! No wonder I'm sitting here with no fucking money. Blurg.

I'm adding this blog to Twitter

I hate Twitter and I'm trying to make this entire experience less painful. I don't even like texting. It's way too much. I don't want that much info about anyone, and I don't want them to have it about me, but since I have to think about 'marketing' and other bullshit I care nothing about so that someone can give me the money I need to pay my rent and buy food... so be it. I was feeling a little guilty about the blog post of me hating my mom, but oh well. It's not as passionately true today, but the facts remain the same. So hi.

Job Search

Today I have nine jobs waiting for me to write cover letters for in my email queue. I hate writing cover letters. At least most are jobs I'm actually interested in. I always get so insecure about writing cover letters. They all seem like bullshit. Since I've rarely worked in traditional workplaces (and never had a full time job for more than 3 months in my entire adult life), the idea of writing a straight square cover letter always freaks me out. I'm always a little quirky because that's who I am and I don't want to sell a bill of goods to someplace I'll have to spend a significant amount of time. I have seen some good ones though and I'm going to give it the old bohemian try.

I'm going to the gym first to focus my mind. I'm only going to do 3 cover letters for the jobs today. I know I get burned out fast on things I'm not really interested in doing.

I hate this. I hate blind job sends. I hate it because it's never worked for me and I never receive any feedback so I keep changing my resume thinking it's the problem without really knowing. I've been freelance for 16 years and now that it's dried up it's made me question my basic value systems. It been good questioning with disturbing answers. Like, I know- KNOW- I cannot work in any corporate office environment. I don't want to use my life like that. I like money as much as the next girl, but is it really worth it to go to work everyday plotting my coworkers demise. It's really the conversation of it all. I hate the pedantic chitchat. If I could just show up, do my work (in however long it takes) and bounce then I'd be a happy clam.

But all the unspoken rules of conduct and conformity should have gotten beaten into me when I was still a kid. Instead, I got to wear whatever I wanted, speak my mind, manage my own time and people, and then go party with people I love and respect. I'm spoiled to the concept of work. Oh and did I mention they gave me a lot of money for it as well?

Oh, well. It's a new dawn. It's a new day. Let me go take out my frustrations on the elliptical machine and come back home and bang this out.

Dispondant

I guess I don't write because I don't feel like I have anything to say. I've started a storytelling night at my local bar, but still don't think what I have to say is important. It's a problem. I don't even have a story to tell next Monday, and it's my damn night. Arghh.

I feel like all of this is bullshit. What's the point of any of it? I'm feeling very doomsday machine about the entire existence. I guess that's what depression is, but the side effects of the anti depression meds sound like a hangover to me and drinking's much more fun.

I kinda want to tell a story about sex, but really? I can scant remember what that's even like. What about my childhood? Well if I'm drunk enough, which already says a lot about that story. I don't have any new stories to tell except what lives in my head. Not having much cash has limited my movements. FALSE. Freaking out about money and having the darkness living just over my head has limited my movements. This is NYC and I'm smart enough to find free shit.

What do I want to say? That I don't believe in the life I was bred to live. I think the whole system is going down in flames so why try to run a losing race? I can see through the illusion of a middle class ideal and what I interpret as the plastic boringness of it. It seems stupid to continue applying for jobs I don't want that I never hear back from anyway. The questioning of the choices I've made. Fighting hard to move forward and find my own way. All with $37 to my name.

I'm exhausted and feel like it's only going to get worse. I don't believe that all the time and it's not ingrained in my core. Yet the active part of me gets paralyzed and overwhelmed by it. I have no security anywhere. I have no job, my rent's always late, my family's moved from my childhood home, and the part that makes me mad to write- I'm single.

It makes me mad because I don't like to identify with the idea that a man would make any of that easier. [Yet see the sex comment above.]

I'm going to see Liza tonight and maybe her abject crazyness will inspire me to get over myself and stop the voice that tells me it's all worthless.

Happy post Kiddo, happy post.

I am so sick of not working

There's only so much boozing and vegging out I can do. I'm now DYING to got to work somewhere. I just sent out an invitation to my favorite podcast The Risk Show to be an intern. And I'm totally jazzed about it. I hope they accept. My new resume has filled me with confidence. Wish me luck.

Day One- No Drinking

Okay, so yesterday was really day one, but I didn't know it then. Last Friday I got a pimple on my neck. At first it just felt like a pimple, but then it started growing and hurting. It felt like it was growing legs into my neck. I’m very squeamish about my neck.

The pain became familiar to me because in the spring I’d had what I thought was a pimple, then a mosquito bite under my right boob. Then it got big and burst and was gross and I went to the doctor and he gave me the same antibiotics because I had a staph infection. I’d first felt the “bite” right after getting out of the pool and steam with my ladies on a Friday. By Wednesday I was at the doctors office. I couldn’t drink for a week and it was hell (and I didn’t quite make it… apparently I believe Coors light isn’t really an alcoholic beverage since it’s not one I partake of …ever.). I also didn’t swim as much this year.

So after the doctors yesterday, with a bandaged neck and on antibiotics, I decided to think about it differently. See, I’m up writing and not too drunk to string coherent sentences. I’ve decided to really take this time and take stock of my situation.

I’ve been applying to jobs all day and getting to the cover letter stage and freaking out because cover letters scare the shit out of me. So I have a bunch of tabs open with my résumé uploaded waiting for me to grace the page with some witticisms about how I want this bullshit job so I can show a judge that I shouldn’t be evicted and convince my landlady to give me another lease. At least until I can figure out if I’m really going to throw things in a bag and move to Paris. It wouldn’t be so hard if I could just get a commercial. And the thought of trying to get more work makes me want to drink. Not that I mind production work, I mind the fact that no one’s calling me to work. I’d love to do another commercial like the one I just did. Or like the movie, but the Marshall is scheduled to put me out January 7, and I don’t really have all the money I need to make that not happen. I’ve sold some mutual funds, but what if I give her all the money and she still evicts me? Then I’m really broke. And I’m just figuring out what I’m going to do here now that I’ve given up on production. I’m so close and just need like 6 months. I might not have it. So, I must write cover letters.

But I’ve gotta tell ya- it’s certainly put another kind of fire in my belly. I’m not so much saying what I won’t do, but look at what I really want to do. And not just write to make money. That puts too much pressure on my writing right now. It’s going somewhere I really like and, like me, tenses up under pressure. My personality changes and is not the creative soul I’ve sold myself on.
So I really want to bartend, but it’s the holidays and I’m waiting for the dust to settle before I go out and hit that. I don’t know the first thing about how bartenders make the magic that lives in my glass. I mean, I know, but I never know how much I owe or how much cocktails cost. I want to take a bartending class to get comfortable back there. And bartending classes aren’t free.

The thing about it all is- Money!

Every sidestep I want to take takes money and it’s keeping me up at night. All this education and I don’t feel like I’m qualified to do anything. I’ve never gotten a job with my résumé ever. I believe this is so because I have my crazy cover letters attached. I can be professional, but I’ve never really worked in a professional environment. I don’t have the clothes for it. I’d have to take out a loan to go to work and I am not what they call credit worthy right now.

So today on day one of my not drinking, I gave myself a little schedule and as of now, I’ve completed the big tasks. But I had to write down to eat yogurt with honey (check), journal writing (check), drinking tea (check) then working out (check). Shower (check), lunch (check), write on blog (check), read (I’m on it now).

So I’ve given myself a gold star day. I always like to keep the momentum of gold star days. Days when I’ve done exactly what I set out to do. There aren’t many of them, which keeps the gold star special. (I should get some more colored stars that way I have some kind of grading system. Make it not so all or nothing.) Yet, it’s Christmas now- an actual event day. Then it’s Saturday then… Then nothing. Then Saturday I can do the same exact thing and make it to class.

But see how the alcoholics can’t think about Saturday. So I’m going to follow their sage examples and just think about tomorrow. I’m going to keep it even simpler and just think about today. Because 10 days from now, I’m getting it in!

Reading: "It's Six A.M., Do You Know Where You Are?" by Jay McInerney in the Paris Review Book of Heartbreak, Madness, Sex, Love, Betrayal, Outsiders, Intoxication, War, Whimsy, Horrors, God, Death, Dinner, Baseball, Travels, The Art of Writing, And Everything Else in the World since 1953