On my first shifts lows and new glasses

Before I forget again, so when I got my eyes checked out the optometrist is talking about how her apple computer died and lost all her stuff, and I mention that they sell extra drives for the purposes of backing that stuff up (called a time capsule I think). She goes "yeah, hindsight's 20/20."

I said "That's... that's actually a really funny thing for an optometrist to say."

Sure, in a tv show it'd be cliche, but in real life that's hilarious. And I'm not even sure she was doing it as 'classic optometrist' joke, I think it just happened.

I'm really enjoying my work at the condo for the most part. I expected the first night of training to be interminable (it was), but afterwards, like I've been saying, just me and my books. I'm like that guy from that Twilight Zone episode.

My buddy Jimmy says it's actually a good fit because I hate people. Maybe a bit hyperbolic, but not far off.

The only problems I've had are of course in dealing with people- not any kind of security issues, just them talking to me and doing their best to unintentionally insult me.

I mentioned to this one old man who'd lost his keys that I wanted to volunteer at a couple of places for the sake of learning about things. "What's this talk of volunteering? You need to get to work and make money. You'll be 30 before you know it."

Augh as if I'm not already hyper aware of that fact already, already questioning my life decisions, did you really have to rub it in, old man? At least I haven't lost my keys and locked myself out of my home. Zing!

Then this other guy asks me what I do, I talk about my reviews: "how's the pay?"

It's... just something I do for now...

And then this bubbly fast talking girl is talking to me about the quick turnover of staff working my job, that it must be really hard working nights like that. Unless you're a total loser with no social life.

Ouch. I- I'm right here. I mean, you're actually TALKING to me right now.

So yeah, those encounters sucked.

But I did get to help a cable guy find the underground lair of internet connections, and he was really nice, and this other dude came in for a parking permit, saw I was reading a Thor comic, and was all "Hey, you're a Thor fan? I just read Siege Aftermath..." and that made me smile.

I don't generally trust myself to just know when I'm feeling good, but there are a couple of cues that, when they appear, I can say "hey, I must be feeling pretty good!" One is when I'm walking around and start singing to myself. The other is if I'm walking and I start pretending like I can shoot webs like Spider-Man. I was walking down the hall on patrol and started doing that, so that put my mind to ease about how I was feeling.

Uh, that said, I was feeling pretty low today. There wasn't anything I particularly wanted to do, but I didn't particularly want to do nothing either. I called up a friend of mine to see a movie but he was actually hanging out with a bunch of other people that are my friends as well. I couldn't help feeling left out, so that sucked.

Okayokayokay this is sounding too negative, SO

I've been getting back into Robert McKee's "Story"- his book on story contstruction (mostly for screenplays, but it works for whatever). I don't agree with EVERYTHING he says, but I get why he says it, and it is mostly all good stuff.

I took a couple notes of stuff I wanted to remember (to be clear, these are notes of my own articulations of concepts talked about, and thoughts on them, not quotes from the book). Seems like here'd be a good place for them.

Getting into the characters heads is a familiar enough concept, but the telling happens when the gap in expectation and reality occurs- not when the character is let in the door, but when the character is delayed or stopped- you and the character are asking "why can't I enter this door?"

Quote from P. 191: "A story is not a sandwich of episodic slices of life between two halves of an inciting incident."

Why not have inciting incident and resolution of central plot happen immediately? Why add the subplot? In the case of "Rocky", the central plot was only credible after we'd seen the world the characters inhabited. Without the right setup, the conclusion is inauthentic. Or- "how much does the audience need to know about the protagonist and his world to have a full response?"

Ultimately, in a story we're dealing with ECONOMY OF INFO. Better to keep to lighter details and let each individual mind fill in the blanks to sort of "auto-correct" into an authentic experience, than give everything to the audience and make a mis-step that feels inauthentic.

The above paragraph is especially true when we're talking about creating for the widest mass market appeal possible, and less so as we begin to specialize. Theoretically, the more detail you can give, cued into the way a person would want to create it himself, the more exciting and authentic it'll be. I say this because- how else to explain the appeal of, say, the Lord of the Rings books.

I should make it clear that "Story" isn't advocating a non-fleshed out world. It does say to know your characters histories, feelings and everything else you can have, the more the better- but when it comes time to tell the story all that stuff should be used to inform the characters performance, not as a half hour of flashbacks or hundred pages of backstory.

Well, it's 6:40am, so I should be going to bed soon. With my new sleep schedule, this is going to bed early, can you believe that? When I get up I'll be going to Lenscrafters for a new pair of glasses (I did mention my trip to the optometrist). Despite getting new prescriptions, I hadn't gotten them filled out- I've had these same glasses, probably since 2007. I've shed a lot of tears onto them- more so than any other pair of glasses. In fact I think those glasses got off scott free.

Well, don't worry, my style won't change too much. I've done the soft rectangular versus my brothers more circular frame since highschool began. I like drawing little cartoons of me with little squares in front of my eyes and little circles in front of Jordan's.