Getting older

So it's been 3 weeks since I said I would write every day and I only wrote once. I have no excuses. But I do want to say that although I still think that is a great idea, I forgot how much I hate keeping around a bunch of mediocre free flow writing. Ultimately, even if I do write every day, I will still likely come back and edit out most of it. Having said that, I am prone to bouts of laziness, so if you read anything crappy on this blog, just know that I meant to delete it. I can accept that people think I am not good, but I can't stand the thought of people thinking that I don't realise when I am bad.

Anyway, here are a few things I wanted to write about.

I threw out my back a month ago. I actually wanted to write about this but I just kept putting it off. I'm just old. I went rock climbing as usual with my son, and while warming up on what I thought would be a relatively easy climb, my back just started hurting and for a few days, I was in survival mode. Driving home that night was iffy. Every press on the accelerator and brake  took effort so I was thinking if I felt any worse, I'd have to pull over and call an ambulance. Getting out of the car was almost impossible. Tried to get my son to pull me out of the car, but immediately told him to stop because it felt like I was being torn in two. I basically had to use all the other muscles in my body to compensate for the one that was in pain in order to move. Getting in and out of bed was a real pain. I had to push a chair next to my bed and use that to push against. I had to make a choice between falling straight into bed, which was too scary, because I'm sure I would tear something with such a violent movement. So the alternative was to transition to kneeling on the bed, then dropping to all fours and then from there flopping on to my sides, but that all fours position was also not good for my back and I couldn't hold it forever. Ironically, being injured felt a lot like rock climbing, because you're never really in a comfortable position and you always are trying to move to the next position before you got too tired, but you also know that the next position will just tire you out in a different way. Getting out of bed the next day was like a 20-minute project. I gradually got better over the days and weeks and now I have to think about something I don't want to think about - quitting climbing. Climbing has always been there all these years for me as a major part of my life. I bonded with my son over it. It's my main form of exercise. I tell everyone I'll be more careful, it's not going to happen again, but I don't know what to tell myself because I really don't see how much more careful I could have been. I dread the thought, but it is almost certainly going to happen again. Meanwhile, I don't know what else to do, so I'll just keep climbing and keep worrying. 

Last week, it felt like I caught Covid, even though I tested negative the whole week. Started off with a sore throat, then a mild fever for 2 days, and a cough that was very persistent. It felt a lot like when I had Covid last year, maybe because I wanted to recapture that feeling. I remember being in survival mode then, but also still having purpose. I didn't know if I was going to make it, and I didn't know if I was getting better, so I was just taking it one day at a time and it was kind of nice. I was just focusing on learning the intro to Lisa Loeb's Stay and practising the other song parts that I had learnt, and watching Maya And The Three on Netflix. This time around, I knew I was going to live, and it just felt meh.

For the past 2 years, I've been thinking of making videos for Youtube. I love the short comedy sketches made by ProZD and Julie Nolke. I would love to do what they are able to do, but I don't have any solid sketch ideas so far, but to be honest, I haven't really sat down to try and write a script before. Maybe I just have to try and fail. So far, I haven't really done anything for Youtube but I have put together short videos for TikTok. Short videos seem a bit less intimidating. I always feel like Youtube videos (not Youtube Shorts) ought to be at least a few minutes long and so far, I haven't got a funny premise that are that long, unless I sketchify some of my stand up ideas. Another part of me wants to make something a bit serious though. I have this idea to make a short documentary about myself as an open micer. About what motivates us to be open micers, etc. A lot of the footage would be of me at home and at the open mics and weekend shows, and maybe some of me hanging out with the other comics after a show. I just think it would be fun and interesting because as far as I know, it hasn't been done before. A lot of the stuff on Youtube is still more style than substance. They all talk about focusing on story and not on gear, and then they all go on to talk about the latest camera. And to be honest, there is just way too much slow-motion B-roll. Since the Sony A7SIII was released, every vlog about walking a dog is just 120fps madness. What are you doing? Stop it! You're making a Youtube video, not a Michael Bay film. Also, that thing where you're doing a vlog, but the camera shows you walking/running/skating/biking into the frame without a care in the world? That was cool when Casey Neistat did it 10 years ago and the only reason it was cool was because nobody else was doing it. Now, everyone is doing it and there is no reason to. It doesn't add anything to the story. In fact, it's distracting. You walk into the room and start talking about your day, but nobody is listening because we're all thinking "Who the fuck put the camera there?" We all know you're the only one shooting this video, so we know you set the camera up and moved furniture around, and spent half the morning getting the white balance right. And that's all nerdy and technical and cool and we can respect that. And then you put on a jacket and went back out of frame and came back in like you're the Fonz and we're like get the fuck out of here!