In Too Deep

First off, I have a car, and a job interview scheduled for Monday morning, so things are looking up. But then there's this.

I am deep in the weeds of trying to get this special Halloween surprise ready, and it is seriously kicking my ass. I'm at that point where I'm completely losing confidence in it. My writing sucks and my execution of the concept sucks.

I'm not saying it will suck when I'm done, necessarily. It won't be great, but at least parts of it will probably work pretty well. But right now, I'm far from being finished, so all I see are the rough edges. It gets disheartening, especially considering how much work I still have to go on it.

Lots of creative people go through stages like this. What matters is how you learn to push through them, I guess. Sometimes it's hard to tell, though. Akiva Goldsman wrote the Academy Award-winning screenplay to "A Beautiful Mind." If he ever hit that point where he hated everything about his script, obviously he found the right solution to push through and trust his instincts. On the other hand, he also wrote the screenplay to the George Clooney/Arnold Schwarzenegger opus "Batman and Robin." And in that case, I really wish he would have listened to that inner voice telling him it sucked, because it was right.

And that's a real dilemma, to try to push through and persevere against that inner voice of self-doubt, knowing that it really could be right. But you might not know until you're finished, and the only way to finish is to assume the voice is wrong, even if it's not. So hard sometimes.

Nevertheless, I am not quitting. There will be a special Halloween surprise on Sunday. Absolutely. Even if it sucks. Just consider this an exercise in lowering expectations.