It feels like there is novacaine in my soul. I have so little emotion about anything. I care about practically nothing. I love my cats. I derive a small amount of pleasure from watching the Daily Show, or reading a good book. Overall though, the passion of my life drained a long time ago. This was long before the big break up. It has little to do with my ex. 
That’s not to say the break up hasn’t affected me, as clearly it has. I think I can also say it hasn’t helped me either. Before we were together, I was completely content with making movies and being alone. I am struggling to get BACK to that feeling I had then. I’m 10+ years older now, and even without a wife and kids, I have some different priorities.
At least the physical pain from MRSA and then the anger I felt at being abandoned at my time of greatest need was something, but that’s passing quickly away. There’s just no feeling right now, like my soul got amputated. I don’t ‘feel’ anything again.
I have referred to this as a form of “writer’s block’, but writing isn’t the problem. I have a ton of projects written or in ‘various stages of pre-production’, meaning good ideas that just need massaging or fermenting. It’s the commitment to MAKING the movies that I struggle with now.
Maybe I have set a bar of quality so ridiculously high that it’s stifling my ability to even attempt to make a movie. I used to be more about quantity than quality because I was learning how to create quality in the higher quantity. Now I want to maintain a level of excellence in my work or it isn’t worth doing, at least to me.
Editing film/video used to be my ultimate passion for the process of making a movie. Today, I cannot even do a first pass unless an assistant editor has done a rough cut. Even if I throw it out entirely, creatively, my mind just refuses to grapple with starting from scratch.
Maybe it’s ego only. Maybe it’s just boredom, but I crave that collaboration, that starting point from someone else. That’s now indicative of the entire filmmaking process for me. Now I can’t utilize something like the 48 Hour Film Project or other contests, etc. because I’ve already done it, but I’m not motivated by competition nor do I feel like the extreme limitations of time result in the ‘best’ work you are capable of. I like deadlines, but imagine if some of these works had taken the real time to write a better story or find the best editorial choices.
At the moment, all I can do is just keep searching my soul for whatever it is that will erode this imaginary roadblock. I’m not looking for sympathy. I’m not looking for people to make suggestions, although I am moved by the many emails and phone calls this blog has evoked.
No one can help me but me. I already know this. I’m just expressing myself, nothing more nothing less.
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