Things I Will Be Thinking About At 7:54 AM

This shall do perfectly.

Oh, shit.

Oh, balls.

Why are you awake right now? Why did you wake up right now? You’ve got a whole six minutes before your alarm goes off. You need that sleep. You should just go back to sleep. If you close your eyes right now, you can go back to sleep before you remember the fact that you’re shooting Episode 5 of Writers today.

Shit.

Well, wait, look at the clock again. Maybe it’s one of those things where you glance at the clock really quickly, and then when you look back and actually look, it turns out that it’s like 5:54 and you’ve got two more hours of sleep. You probably saw the wrong time! You’ve probably got two more hours before you have to get up and make your TV show!

Shit. It’s 7:55.

It’s Sunday morning and you’re getting up at 8:00. I guarantee you, you’ve got to be the only person in town to be awake at this hour on this day. Everybody else is sleeping in until noon, just like you used to.

Everyone except Irene, your production assistant. She’s probably been up for two hours getting props and costumes together for the shoot today. And she’s only doing this because you had to go and make a TV show. And she’s not even getting paid. Way to go, jerface. Some sweet innocent girl is getting up early on Sundays and sacrificing her social life all because you had to go and create a TV show. It’d be one thing if you were ruining your own life, but you shouldn’t pull Irene down with you. Who died and made you Aaron Sorkin? You should buy her some sort of gift, when this is all over. Alcohol, for instance. Oh, man, but one bottle of $7 gin isn’t going to be enough after all she’s put up with. After this you’re going to need to sign her up for the Prescription Painkiller of the Month Club.

Oh Jesus this is Episode 5, this is the one with all those extras in it! This is the one where you called in favors on every sucker you knew to get them to show up today in the J-school to stand around in the background while you make your show. This means you’ve got to be on schedule - totally, 100% on schedule – or else you’ll be wasting all your friends’ time. And then, for that, they will hate you. They will burn you in effigy, because you wasted a couple hours of their Sunday – weekends are so short, you can’t afford to just blow a couple hours like that – and then you’ll have no friends all because of your goddamn TV show!

I’m going to turn my face toward the wall and pull the covers over my head. That usually makes things better. Maybe I’ll just stay like this all day. “Where’s Truman?” Everyone will ask. “We have to do all these important things that require him to be responsible and leaderly!” And Mike will have to tell them, “Sorry, Truman is facing the wall and he’s got the covers pulled up over his head – we’re just going to have to do without him today.” And, I mean, who’s going to argue with that? Turning to face the wall by your bed and pulling the covers over your head is about as close to being dead as you’ll ever get. And they wouldn’t make a dead guy run a TV show, would they?

God, why did you do this? Why did you let Mike talk you into this show? Sure, you always wanted to make your own TV show, but the understanding was that that dream was about as realistic as your dreams of becoming a secret agent in 4th grade! In 4th grade you never snuck around the school gathering secrets and slitting hall monitors’ throats before they could sound the alarm, so why are you masquerading as a TV producer now?

Oh, so sleepy. You were up too late working on the blog.

You can’t bail on today, though. This is Episode 5. This is the funniest of all episodes. You have to be there today. This is the episode that separates the men from the boys. This is the episode that has to look good the whole time, start to finish, no questions asked. This episode could determine whether you get hired by a major television network or not. If not, then Irene got up this morning in vain. Are you going to do that to Irene? Are you going to make her get up this morning so she can help you make a sub-par show? You cannot do that! You have got to make this worth everyone’s while! Otherwise, you’re going to be a crappy friend and an even crappier producer.

Is this it? Is this what following your dreams is? Lying in bed, staring at the wall, willing time and space to come to a halt so you don’t have to face the possibility that what you’ve poured so much hype and effort into is little more than when you and your friends used to fool around with your Dad’s video camera? Worrying that, even if you successfully shoot the episode, it might turn out to look like shit anyway? Trying to keep up with my schedule in addition to this damn show? Is this what following your dreams is? Is this why so many people live droll, unhappy lives – because following your dreams kind of sucks a lot of the time?

You’ve got enough money to buy a decent – okay, sort of crappy – motorcycle. You could get up right now and take a bus to the cycle shop downtown, buy a bike, gas it up, and just start riding. Kiss the school, the column, the show, the fucking blog goodbye and just ride. There aren’t any responsibilities when you’re riding your motorcycle across the country; all you have to do is not crash. I feel like I could handle that amount of responsibility. I’d just ride as far as the money took me, and then I’d start working for gas and food. I could be someone totally different! I could be Gus. I could be Gus Rodriguez. Gus Rodriguez doesn’t have a grammar test on Friday, nor does he have to get up at 8:00 to shoot his TV show. Gus Rodriguez works at a gas station in Saginaw, Michigan – at least, he does until he’s got enough money to fill the tank on his bike and blast out of town. After that, who knows where he’s going? Nobody! Not even Gus! That’s who I could be. I’d be free as the freest of birds. And I’d have a CD player, a cheap one, and a mix CD with only three songs on it – Baba O’Riley, Sweet Child of Mine, and The Boys Are Back In Town, and those would be the only songs I’d need, because Gus Rodriguez knows what the three best road trip songs in the world are. And then, once I got to the east coast, I could sell my bike for a boat ticket to Europe, and-

Oh, shit. There’s the alarm.

Truman Capps can scarcely ride a bicycle.