"Simplify."

So there I was last night...laying in bed trying to fall asleep...and it hit me like a ton of bricks.

Backstory....

This past Christmas, I met my girlfriend's cousin and his boyfriend (yeah, I said his boyfriend. Get over it.). The boyfriend was an indie writer/director who spoke about his movie and its release.

At the time, I just thought it was really cool to know somebody in the movies, even if it was just the indie scene.

Recently, his movie has been gaining traction. With its release, publicity is growing and the response has been positive.

I read up on it more and more last night...and it just made me mad.

Don't get me wrong. Not at all mad at him. I think he's a fantastic person. I truly enjoyed getting drunk and talking to the two of them that night (obviously we fall on the complete opposite ends of almost every spectrum known to man, but the discussion was so robust and intelligent that I couldn't help but love it). I wish the both of them all the success in the world and I hope this movie propels him into the stratosphere.

I was mad at myself.

Why the hell wasn't I trying to do something like that? For most of my life that I can remember, I was always sure I would be doing something involving writing.

Only...I had no plan. No roadmap to get there. Only the thought and belief that I would get there. By some fluke chance, I'd be getting paid to write- be it my opinion, imagination, or some combination of the two, I'd be a writer.

Of course, I am the only one to blame for this massive failure. If I want it, I need to make it happen. I need to find a way. Instead, I sat here like an idiot and waited for that spark of genius that I would ride into the sunset.

It got me thinking.

What the hell would I write about? I used to think that my senior year of college was a good story to write about. It might still be. The first story I wrote about it was just dripping with hatred and self loathing. I thought writing as catharsis would absolve me of all the pain, guilt, and destruction around me.

It didn't.

So I thought about life in general. I thought about all my friends. How I grew up. Everything that happened to me. Autobiographical, if you will.

It tied into a feeling I've been having for awhile.

Restlessness. Not necessarily unhappiness, but the fact that I can't pinpoint what's been making me so restless does lead to that unhappiness.

I need to be doing something. But there's a million things to be doing. It's just this nagging feeling. Have you ever had that itch in the back of your throat that you can't scratch? Well, imagine that, only its not an itch, its only an ineffable feeling that consumes your chest cavity and your skull. You can't escape it. Its just there. Its not malicious, its just inexplicable.

More recent backstory...

I got home on Sunday and got into my  room, sat down, and just looked around.

Clutter. Everywhere.

I got mad. I don't know why. One word came to mind. The culmination of this constant restlessness combined with all the myriad feelings I've dealt with recently.

"Simplify."

I grabbed trash bags and immediately just began stuffing things in them. Some with clothes, some with mail or other papers from nightstands....anything remotely complicated got thrown into a bag and removed.

That's just a start.....

"Simplify."

--to make less complex or complicated; make plainer or easier: to simplify a problem.

The clutter was just a surface movement. Just a measure to get started. To simplify is to strip to its essence. The only way to figure this thing out is to remove the complex. Remove the unnecessary.

That's not easy for me. I've always been a bit of a wanderer. I prefer to be alone and at any given time I can be interested in five different things. I've never been good at a singular focus.

Back to the beginning...

Laying in bed, with thoughts of how to simplify everything combined with my waning anger that was losing its battle to sleepiness, I began to doze off, letting my mind wander to what I'd right about. If I could write a screenplay and make a movie, what would I say. What would be my point?

The Cleveland Syndrome. (Yup. I made it up. Deal with it.)

Stockholm Syndrome is the creation of empathy through a traumatic experience.

Cleveland Syndrome is the creation of apathy through traumatic experience.

If I could boil down everything wrong with me into one synopsis, I'd probably explain the main issue with most of the people who live in Cleveland these days and aren't successful (at least not to the level they want to be).

People who end up being wildly successful deal with life differently and think differently. Malcolm Gladwell wrote a whole book about that. But, when faced with adversity, they pointed their aggression and their ability straightforward and used it to propel themselves ahead of everyone else.

We, on the other hand, we get hurt. We get hurt often. Sometimes to the core. Bone shattering. Cold pain. It hurts, stings, burns, breaks, destroys, kills.

We channel the aggression and ability.......nowhere. Aimlessly. Brought up in a culture where its better not to try because the fear of the unknown is greater than the desire to succeed. Drowned before we even tried to doggie paddle, if only because we were really afraid to drown.

Don't get me wrong. I love Cleveland. I've written at length about my love for the city.

But I think this syndrome is real. Its why the city and its people are constantly downtrodden. Constantly the butt of jokes that weren't even funny when the incidents occurred some 40+ years ago.

We are one of the few places in the US, the land of opportunity, the land of millionaires, who choose mediocrity because we're used to it. Its a warm blanket. It says "you don't have to go anywhere, do anything, or be anybody, and I'm still going to be here for you. You'll never have to hurt or feel anything. You just live."

Maybe its just me who feels this way. Maybe I'm swinging blind in the dark. I don't know.

I'm just determined to figure this thing out. To make something happen. To figure out why I have this feeling that won't go away. (Maybe its an early sign of a heart attack. Who knows.)To figure out what I need to do to make me happy.

Whenever I write, I always settle on a playlist of beautiful, melodic, slower music. It allows me to hear my inner voice better and block out everything going on around me. It allows me to simplify. It becomes a background- its there, and I know its there, but it doesn't really register. Its just an inner conversation with myself  with an audible soundtrack for anyone nearby who wants to listen.

Its simple. Which is what I need more of.

Simplify.