On Wednesday, I volunteered to sit on a screenwriting pitch panel at The Academy of Art College. My screenwriting teacher teaches a couple of classes there and she asks her ex-students every semester to help her out. When you sit on pitch panel, you learn a lot about how to actually deliver a pitch so it’s good training.

The guy who sat on my pitch panel with me actually got his screenplay optioned on a pitch panel. He went to some pitch panel in Hollywood, pitched his movie about a dozen times, and got a call from a couple of young producers. The young producers works for the guy who just produced Jet Li’s newest film “Unleashed”.

So my pitch panel buddy has optioned his screenplay, but said the Hollywood lawyers’ fees ate up most of it. He wanted to have a professional contract in case his script is ever made into a movie. And now he’s do rewrites for free with the young producers and he said the process is going really, really well.

Interesting huh? My pitch panel buddy said this is his sixth screenplay, and when he told me his idea I was even impressed. His screenplay is very topical and is a thriller having to do with GPS technology. It kind of reminded me of GPS technology “Panic Room” type movie, low budget but very, very exciting.

I was really happy for him, and I was like wow, someone I know actually got his screenplay bought by Hollywood. Okay, maybe not for very much money since options I hear start as low as $35,000, but still he got paid for his work. Pitch panel buddy guy didn’t want to say how much he got, but he said it wasn’t much. But if his script get made into a movie, he said his Hollywood lawyer got him a really, really good deal. He better have gotten a good deal since he said the lawyer spent 1.5 months with the producers trying to hammer out a contract.

And then I started to get depressed. Okay, maybe I got depressed because afterwards we went to the W hotel for drinks and sat on the couches in the lobby and I watched couples grope each other as they we were waiting for the lift and I was like “I want to be groped in the lobby of a nice hotel by some guy waiting for the lift and a night of some majorly serious shagging”. Okay, maybe not any guy and for god’s sake not the old wrinkly 60 year old dude who looked like he was wearing a dark brown shag rug on his heard and who was feeling up the 20 something girl, but some cute guy who was very smart an very sweet.

But no, I think I got depressed thinking I’ll never be a writer who makes a living as a writer. I mean, what are the chances of that ever happening. Sure I can get paid, but not enough to quit my job and have as my next career – creative writer. And I’m like maybe my writing is just a hobby that I have and then I don’t have to stress about ever finishing anything. I can just start projects and never finish and not worry. But that’s an even more depressing thought isn’t it?

I’m getting too involved in work again, and I hate it. Work just sucks out my creative energy, and when I get home I’m too wired and exhausted to do anything.

Somehow I got back on meeting schedule hell, where I’m in meetings constantly. I managed to get myself taken off all the meeting lists by not saying anything in meetings last year, but now I’m suddenly back on everyone’s lists. I hate it!

On Tuesday, I came into the office by 7:30 am so I could be prepared for a conference call from 8-9 am. Then I was supposed to be in another meeting from 9:30-10 am, but thankfully it got cancelled. But then at 10 am, I was pulled into a four-hour meeting from 10am-2pm, and afterwards I was pulled into yet another meeting to debrief about the four-hour meeting from 3-4 pm.

Since I came in early, I decided to leave at 4:15 pm because I was so mentally exhausted by the end of the day. But my day still hadn’t ended since I had a class from 7-10 pm that night. By the time I finally got home at 10:30 pm, I was so wired and out of sorts that I made myself go to bed. Not that going to bed early helped, because I was tossing and turning and had weird dreams all night.

I hate meetings! My company’s dysfunctional nature comes out in full force in large meetings, and especially in meeting debriefs. I hate when people say “that’s not our problem”, because I’m like, yes it is, we’re all in this together; if you let that department sink and slack off then we’ll never get this project off the ground. I actually told someone yesterday because I was so frustrated “how are we supposed to make it easier for the consumer to do business with us if we there’s no easy way to get business done internally”. The person looked at me like I was completely nuts, but I’m a big believe in “as above so below”. If your business processes internally aren’t easy, you’re never going to be able to make it easy for your external customers to do business with your company. It just ain’t every going to happen.

But I won’t get myself get worked up in my company’s dysfunctionality and politics. I’ve done that before, and it’s just too tiring to fight battles in the corporate world. It’s much easier to just go with the flow and do what you’re told to do without questions, because every time I’ve done that I’ve been promoted. Not that I want to get promoted or anything like that, although more money is always nice, but I just want to make my work life peaceful again so I can have the energy to have a creative life when I get home.

I must be processing a ton at night in my dreams because I'm having the weirdest, weirdest dreams.

On Monday I dreamt I was with a woman I used to know and we were in parking structure and trying to escape with two other women. We had sub-automatic machine guns were carrying belts of ammo. The woman I used to know who appeared in my dream is someone I used to admire very greatly. She was a doctor and dedicated runner, and the nicest person. I lost touch with her years ago so it was weird for her to appear in a dream of mine. She was a tough cookie of a girl, but very fair minded.

Around 3 am last night before I woke up, I dreamt that my best friend from grade school had brought me a birthday cake was singing Happy Birthday to me. This is a girl who moved away in junior high and although we went to the same high school, she and I moved in separate crowds and didn't have much to do with each other. Why the woman was in my dream when I haven't thought about in years probably is a mystery. She said she had forgotten all my birtdays and wanted to make up for it. Weird, weird, weird!

Later this morning before my alarm went off, I dreamt I was at a Starfbombs in Paris and they had run out of milk for my grande latte. The american owner told me that the french don't put milk in their coffe so they weren't bothered that they were out of milk. I was upset and I started arguing with the woman, but I didn't lose my temper. And then later on in the dream I came back to apologize.

Then in another part of the dream, I was somewhere on the British railway system on a train with a bunch of people trying to get to London so we could make in time for the London showing of "Revenge of the Sith". We pulled into some station and I heard the announcer mention that it was a transfer point for all these stations including the Gatwick Airport. I couldn't remember where we were supposed to transfer to get to Heathrow, and when I turned my friend were gone.

I assumed they had gotten off the train, but when I exited the train I couldn't see them. In the dream I was panicking and thinking I'll miss the new Stars Wars movie, I won't make it to Heathrow and I'll be lost forever on the British Railway system.

I wouldn't consider the being lost dream a nightmare, but more like annoyances in my life that I absolutely hate; no lattes and not knowing where I'm going and getting lost.

This greek drama paper is going to harder to write than I thought. It's supposed to be due tomorrow, but my teacher said we could also turn it in next week when we have the final.

I mean, I know what I want to say but do I want to spend the next four hours trying to write it or do I write a littel bit every day and turn it in next week. Ideally, I'd like to turn my paper in tomorrow and then spend the rest of the week studying for the final but I just don't feel like I have the energy right now to write a good paper. I feel so lazy right now!