800

Wednesday 9/16/20

This is journal entry #800, for those scoring at home. For a journal that launched in June 2018.

Today has been a complex day. It's 3:30 now. I ran three miles. I just walked five miles. I've been pitching a lot--probably 1500 words' worth of pitches--because I am terrified and I have no money coming in. I'm not getting work. I wrote three versions of a single op-ed that was assigned and ultimately each was turned down. You can do exactly what someone says to do, but there is so much more going on, and you pay the price. The energy price, time price, money price. And it could well be that you couldn't have written anything better. I have openly disclosed what those factors are with various people to the members of my inner circle today, in a letter, but none of that is for these pages. I reached out to a couple people about Guggenheim recommendations. I watched the Challenger docu-series on Netflix--all four parts--which I may be writing about but probably not. I wrote 3500 words of the Sam Cooke book. Bloomsbury will be receiving material from me on Friday--it's just a matter of how much it will be. I shortened attempt #3 of the aforementioned op-ed, and I sent it to someone else. It'd need to run promptly. I don't think it will, but even if it did, the pay would be a lot less.

Here is yesterday's Downtown segment. As has been my habit of late, I listened to it. After never having listened to myself in all of these years doing radio interviews. It's so depressing. I hear someone far better at radio than anyone else anywhere, period, in the world. They seemingly know all, they have the great voice for it, they speak as no one does, they're hilarious, they're entertaining, it's always both wise and edgy and they sound like a super nice person, too. And I listen to people who sound as though they are barely functioning illiterates drooling out their broken sentences, their cliches, with their horrible voices, their complete lack of command of language, with zero humor, and just straight up fuck all, and they might make millions, they might be rolling in gigs, and they suck at radio. There is no comparison. Meanwhile, I go around begging, because no one gives a shiny fuck about ability, and I think a lot of times, they can't even recognize it, the people who hire and such. They hook up their buddy, they ask who your agent is, who your dad was if he was in the business, and that's it. There is no one with this kind of radio or speaking talent though, and it's so obvious. And, right now, it's so irrelevant.

And no, I'm not going to go through the motions of pretending this isn't all true, because what is the point at this point? I'm not doing the false modesty shit, because not only is no one reaching out to save me, many are trying to make sure I get nowhere, and no one is reaching out because I'm flat out better at this. Or any of the other things for which the same goes. One single human, and it's all true. Shouldn't we be making some fucking money off of this? I'll shut my own mouth later, but right now I'm not enabling this shit by pretending this is how anything should be. Like I'm supposed to just willingly die in poverty and anonymity when I'm infinitely better at these things than anyone out there? That's the good night I'm supposed to be okay with launching myself into, like I never fucking existed? No. Fuck that. I'm going to say what is so bloody clear to anyone who is the smallest bit open and competent. And the competition sucks, because most people on radio can barely fucking talk. And they don't know jack about jack. And they certainly don't think fast. They all do one thing and they cannot even do that one thing. They can hardly even ever execute a single clean sentence without and um, ah, you know, um, you know, at the end of the day, um, you know, ah, just sayin', um, ah, you know, like, you know, um, ah. What I know is they suck and I don't and I'm getting fucked here.