some things i just can't explain about myself.  most of the things that matter about myself that i want to understand but can't, i try very hard to get a handle on and figure out.  well, some things i have just had to accept that i never will be able to.  but some things, are just, not important enough to worry about.  you just sort or know them about yourself and let them go.
   just now i was reminded of one of the ones that i tend not to focus on very much but just accept about myself.  I was watching the last half of the movie 'The Replacements.' (hey waddya know, i actually reviewed it, here) If you don't remember, or didn't see it because you're fairly smart, this movie starred Keanu Reeves as a quarter back who is hired to work as a scab with a bunch of misfits when the normal NFL team is out on strike.  Now right away you should be asking me, 'what the hell would you be doing watching a movie with Keanu in it that isn't The Matrix?'  Well, the answer tonight is simple, i'd seen it before, knew i liked it and i only had to watch the second half. 
   The answer for a couple of years ago when i watched it the first time, in the theatre even since i reviewed it, is a little more complicated.  I am a sucker for sports movies.  First let's get some other stuff out of the way.  To me, there is not possibly anything more boring to watch than televised sporting events.  Baseball is a damned good thing to nap to, as is golf but i'd rather just stare at a blank wall.  I kind of like the olympics sometimes but i am not very sure why them either. Watching live sports is pretty much the same thing.  I don't mind playing sports either, for the most part, although it is rare that i do.  I am not a very competitive person at all. And yet, something about sport movies delights me.
   I can't tell you what it is, that's the whole point of what i am writing here.  A friend of mine offered that perhaps it was the fact that all the boring parts are taken out and it is distilled down to just the highlights.  Maybe that is part of it, but that is not all of it.  Maybe it is being able to see people overcoming hardship, you know digging deep for the good stuff and coming back with it.  Maybe it is the fact that most of the ugly stuff about competition is taken out of sports movies.  It is certainly true that the heavy drama type such stories are not interesting to me.  The human element, that might be what it is.  It might explain why i enjoy westerns and war movies as well.
   I do know that when i am watching these sports movies, when things go good, i get bursts of adrenalin and elation and when they go bad i get sad.  I don't get these things during dramas and comedies for the most part.  Perhaps it is just the more direct connection to the heart strings.  perhaps i am only emotional at a shallow level. perhaps...i dunno.
   What i do know is that this allows me to watch movies starring horrible actors that are not done well when you compare them to good movies and enjoy them.  Enjoy them a lot. I'd apologize but, really, this isn't something that i feel guilty about.  It's something i accept about myself gladly.

   Editing a book is freakin' hard work. It's not the editing itself, that goes ok, it's, well, so draining.  I guess i had heard how hard it is to go through rewrites but i never really thought about it much.  I can handle reading through and finding things that need tweaking and i could handle coming to a point where i think that whole bits need rewriting.  No, it's the fact that it is damned draining.  When i started editing last week, i had a lot of confidence and love for my book but as i edit, and move through it, finding this and that wrong, it begin to lose the big picture. i begin to get mired in the details but even as i do this i have to keep forcing myself to remember the whole.  i have to know if things are holding together and working together.
    You know what the cumulative effect of this is?  Of keeping the big picture and the little picture together?  Doubt.  Lots of doubt.  Doubt that i have done a good job.  Doubt that it does hold together.  The result of doubt...despair, then hatred.  Not of the book, somehow i still believe the book is good but, hatred of the process, of how it is making me feel.  It feels, somehow, disloyal to doubt this thing that i have created.  But i can't stop the doubt, no matter how hard i try.  So i am filled with despair and doubt.  Do you know what the direct result of this is?  I put it down. I do something else.  The very notion that this despair, doubt and hatred could perhaps move over to being about the book itself scared the shit out of me.  Once i have put it down, it is that much harder to pick back up.
   Take as example this weekend.  The first time i picked up my book, even though it was my only goal for the entire weekend...this evening.  Things were actually going good, and yet a page in, i had found that i had already put it down.  Sigh. It will go on though. i just have to keep plugging away.  As soon as i get through this step i can let a couple of more friends read it and perhaps i will have their support to bolster mine own.   Then again, it is always possible that it does suck.

   The life of the artist is fun, fun i tell you.

   I had a little isaac story to tell tonight but it's late, so next time.