what was her name? edna lutella?

You remember the name of that character,  Edna Loutelle?  Gilda Radner played her on the early season of Saturday Night Live. at least I think that’s what her name was. Anyhow, these days I’m feeling a bit like Edna. I had such a major freak out in November and now it seems that I’m making quite a remarkable recovery. “Nevermind.” I’m trying not to get too optimistic about things less my hopes are dashed once again, but the outlook is good. I’ve had a few weeks of physical therapy now and even though I wasn’t sure about its Efficacy it seems to have actually made the difference. Or perhaps it was just time. I don’t know. I should keep a list of all the things I did, like all the supplements I took and all the types of exercise that I did in addition to the therapy. But here’s what I know; I have very little pain these days and almost certainly the nerve block I received over a month ago has worn off. I actually felt it wear off over last weekend.
Of course I’m not 100%. I’m not even 50% but I’m doing much better. The McKinsey mode of therapy for a herniated disc is designed to push the extruded nucleus material back into the disk. It seemed highly unlikely when I first heard about it but it’s really hard to argue with the results. In just about two months I’ve gone from excruciating pain and not being able to walk to having almost no pain and walking 4 miles a day. When I do feel pain it’s after standing for prolonged period of time, about 30 min. or so. I actually don’t feeling pain while sitting but because sitting is not good for my back I avoid it.
 So there I was a month ago feeling like my world had come to an end. And even as the clouds started to part I was certain that my recovery would take years now it looks like a matter of months. I tried two different antidepressants during this time first Effexor and then Cymbalta. Neither of them really work for me. The Effexor was particularly bad.  I started to feel really anxious within just a few days of taking it so I stopped right away. The Cymbalta was a slower build but after about a week or so I could feel myself growing more and more anxious and more and more depressed. As soon as I stopped taking both antidepressants I felt myself get better. when I talked to my friend Rev. Dave about all of this he said that the reason I was going through this was so I could learn how strong I was. I try to keep that in mind. I also think the reason why I’m going to this is so I can really learn about  patience. I’ve been listening to the Jack Kornfield recordings quite a bit. I put them on shuffle and whichever one comes up is the one I listen to. They are about 40 min. each and focus on a different aspect of Buddhism.
Before Dean left we watched a screener of the movie “the fighter”–well at least I tried to watch the movie but about an hour before we started watching the movie I had a tiny, tiny piece of medical marijuana candy. Seriously I had about an eighth of this tiny little candy. So an hour into the movie I realized that I could no longer follow the story and I felt like I was on acid. I don’t understand why modern marijuana has to be this crazy Acid pot. I was expecting something that maybe would make me a little less anxious, or take the edge off my pain, but I was tripping balls. That’s just not right. I’m not a pothead by any means, I don’t smoke it and I’ve never used it recreationally. It’s just that a friend of mine brought some over and thought that it might help me with my current predicament. So I cautiously tried a little bit and it kicked my ass. I had a major realization while suffering the torments of reefer madness. I realized that the reason I injured my back was because I am to judgemental. Okay maybe this is Stoner thinking here but I made judgments when people tried to tell me that there were nonsurgical alternatives. I made judgments about how I should go about healing myself even before I knew I had a herniated disc. When people suggested things to me like Pilates I scoffed assuming that that was hippie nonsense. I judge myself and my judgment is harsh. I push myself to the point of exhaustion when doing minor things. It’s not just enough for me to straighten up around the house I practically have to repaint. And I’m not one of those people who procrastinates I do everything. I do way too much. I don’t feel satisfied unless I’ve accomplished a huge amount in a day. all of this stems from my judgment of self. My judgment of my worth is based on what I accomplish. If I’m not pushing myself hard I’m just not doing enough. I don’t know where this came from, maybe my dad–but it’s irrelevant at this point. So in light of the fact that it is almost the end of 2010 I have only one resolution for 2011 and that is to be less judgmental. To that end you may notice I have changed my diary name from “silently judging you” to “silently loving you.”
There’s been a bit of good news around the urban household these last couple of days. I sold a script paramount in 2008 and the director with whom I was cowriting had another film green lit right around that time. So the script that we sold Paramount had to be put on the shelf while he went and worked on his other film. That’s all well and good except that we owed Paramount another draft of the script and he couldn’t work on it. And because he couldn’t work on it I could not collect the money the Paramount owed us for that last draft. Well he’s premiering his film at Sundance next month and in the run-up to that premier I sent him a treatment in October for the rewrite. He finally read it this week and e-mailed me to say how much he loved it. He had a couple of notes, and they were really good notes, so we’ll finish up this draft and get it into paramount in February. It’s exactly the way I would like to start the new year. Of course I would be all the more excited to have my series sell at NBC or really any network for that matter. We’ve been waiting for the new president of NBC to take over. His name is Bob Greenblatt and he used to run Showtime. When he was at Showtime my writing partner, my other writing partner B, directed the pilot and second episode of their series weeds which as you know has been a big hit for Showtime. Bob Greenblatt has always been a fan of our writing and has always wanted to do something with us so hopefully with him taking over NBC and us having a series being developed by Warner Bros. he’ll want to buy it. Fingers crossed. I particularly like what NBC has on the air right now. The shows don’t get the highest ratings in the world but they’re smart and funny–and NBC has positioned itself as the network that is like a cable network and really is satisfied with smaller audience shares just so long as the shows are cheap enough to make. They’re interested in content for multiple platforms as opposed to the older model of “appointment television” like friends used to be.
Another nice development in my life is that my sister was in town for a week. She came down from Seattle and spent seven days with me making meals and helping me out. She’s on Weight Watchers and has lost probably 60 or 70 pounds I think. I’m not really sure how much, but it was a lot. So now she’s at her goal weight and she looks great and seems a lot healthier.  All the food she made was prepared according to Weight Watchers guidelines. I don’t need to lose weight but I have to say what she cooked was delicious. More importantly though, having her around, not being alone every day, has made a huge change in my mood and attitude. My sister is really smart, and a deeply compassionate human being. We talked for hours and I think grew closer as siblings. our personalities are fairly different. My sister is very sensitive and I can be very sarcastic so I have to be careful not say or do anything that might unnecessarily upset her. I have unintentionally wandered into sensitive territory from time to time and would, hours later, learn that she was quite upset. But I think over the years we’ve come to understand how to navigate each other’s personalities pretty well. I only made her cry one time and that was when I asked her if she got more than a week off from her job at Microsoft. It seemed like a fairly innocent question to me but it was very upsetting for her. I think she thought I was implying that after having worked for them for two decades she was still so low on the totem pole that she only had one week off. That was not at all what my intention was, I was actually worried that she was using all her vacation time to come see me because she has often spoken about what slave drivers they are Microsoft and how nobody ever gets any time off and if you do take time off from work they look at you like some sort of deserter. Being a teacher I’ve learned how to deal with the waterworks pretty well. I usually have a student in tears at least two or three times a year. I am not overly harsh with them by any means in fact I’m quite diplomatic when it comes to criticism of their work. It’s just that their identity gets mixed up in their work and even a mild criticism of their screenplay pages can feel like an attack on their very being. Not to be sexist but this is particularly true of the women in my class. I think they have been indoctrinated to have a fair amount of insecurity and tend to need my approval more than their male counterparts.
I had most of my students over hear the other night for a movie night. Of the seven from my workshop  two were out-of-town. I actually sort of planned it that way because one of my students, one of the ones who is out of town right now, has very severe asthma and allergies and I have a dog and he is allergic to dogs so I didn’t want to expose him to irritants that might aggravate his condition. We’ll have another movie night once he’s back in town but will do it at school in a hypoallergenic environment. It’s really hard to find movies that they like. They’re so young. The oldest is 30. I try to expose them to a variety of films but their taste is pretty narrow I am sad to say. I hope that with time it will expand. I guess I was the same way At that age–no I wasn’t–I watched everything I could. anyhow we watched the movie “easy a.” It was the second time I’ve seen it and I really liked it. When we have our next movie night I am going to watch “the fighter” because as I mentioned before I’ve really only seen about an hour of it. I have to say the hour that I did see I liked a lot.
All right, this is probably my last entry of 2010. So I’ll see you all on the other side. I hope you have a very happy and healthy 2011.