I finally finished my paper and it ended up being 8.5 pages. I'll read it tomorrow on the way to work and edit it, and make any changes tomorrow night. It's not the best paper, but at least it's over with.

It's a beautiful and warm sunny weekend in San Francisco, and I'm stuck inside finishing my greek drama paper and studying for my greek drama final on Tuesday. My screenwriting teacher on Wednesday asked me if I was still taking classes, and when I said yes she said, "That's why you can't find time to write."

I think Julie is right. I probably won't take a class next fall, and I'm definitely not taking a class this summer. I don't mind taking one day or evening seminars, but not a full month three month commitment. I told Julie I wanted to take a film class and she said to take the two-day film school class they offer at Learning Annex. She said it was just as good.

I really do want the experience of making my own film just to check it out, and a two day commitment is definitely better than a semester commitment of two days a week.

Just to relieve the boredom of studying, I typed of three pages of my "Changing Timelines" novel. That's 800 words, not bad I guess. I was changing my story while writing it then decided to go back to the way it was originally written, since I was going to have to cut a whole page out. I hate when you change one action and then find out after ten minutes that you've eliminated a whole scene with the one change. I hate that! I'll change the scene in the second rewrite.

God I hate studying! I do. It's so boring. I could be out and about gallivanting around and enjoying the day. Actually I'm feeling bette than I thought I would be this weekend, considering I had two filling replaced on Saturday morning. Everytime I have dental work, my mouth hurts for days but this new dentist I'm seeing is gentle with his injections.

I had a silver filling replaced with a composite, and I'm having an onlay put it on my other filling. My other dentist only every did crowns, but this new dentists can do onlays. If I have enough money left in my flex spending, I might have him later on in the year replace more my mercury fillings with composites.

It looks a nice day out and I may go out later to walk in the park, but there's more studying to do and I still have to finish my paper. I'm feeling very sorry for myself right now.

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.