DeMizio's Journal

The "Exams Really Suck" Edition:

First, more discoveries:

1. Naps fail to work during exam week. Any deviation from a set sleep schedule fails. This is a bad thing, especially because the entire week is a deviation from a set schedule.


2. Free food in college is the only way to get some people out of their rooms. Free food during exam weeks is expected: if none is readily available, prepare for a riot.


3. It's funny: the conversation up and down the street outside my window usually concerns drunken people coming back from parties. For the last week, it's been, "If she gives me a 65, I'm going to kill her," and, "Man, only fifteen pages to go."


4. I've stopped for now at Newsies; I'm through it, I'm man enough to admit it. (o/~ and the world will know, and the journal too...mr. pulitzer and hearst do we have news for you...o/~)


5. Watching people move out that you've spent the year with is hard. Helping those people carry stuff to their cars from the third floors is harder.

The La Salle Young Playwrights presented my play tonight, "It Is So." It's the second full one-act play that I've written, and its the second one that they've produced. Mike and Dave did an excellent job; I was overjoyed with the production.

I have a massive inferiority complex, but it acts up most when I write. I truly believe that a lot of what I write sucks. My hands should have been cut off long ago to prevent further desecration to the English language. When my plays are performed, I have a hard time with it: Those people up there are saying my words. It's not them up there any more; its me: with all my insecurities, faults and foibles. I was inconsolable last year at the Young Playwrights performance: fidgety, and anxious. I still cringe whenever I hear my line "buttery baked good." I believe, a lot of the time, that the people who tell me my writing is good are just setting me up for a practical joke: waiting in the wings to laugh at me.

I know this is bullshit.

And I'm getting better. I sat tonight perfectly still in the theater as my words were performed. I rejoiced in the laughter from the people that were there. I watched them do justice to my work; as only actors can do to the solitary, stationery page. And I applauded the actors, and myself, and felt the complex breaking down, some, but not totally.

There's a saying that the only cure for loving is to love more. In much the same way, I'm realizing that the only way to get over this crap about my writing is to write more.

I apoligize for the personalness of this entry, I'll return to lighthearted comedy tomorrow.

For those of you who were there, thank you for laughing and applauding: it is the greatest sound I have ever heard. Karen, Mike, and Dave, thank you for the opportunity once again.

Posted by Matthew at May 2, 2002 12:42 AM