PicoBlog

I’m nervous.

I woke up nervous which is always unsettling. I can tell I’m nervous because I am rubbing my legs on my sheets. Trying to find comfort in the fabric. Sometimes I wake up and I’m just rolling my ankles. Sometimes I am basically running.

Medically this is called periodic limb movement disorder or PLMD. Sometimes its called restless leg syndrome. I have never been diagnosed but it’s amazing what you can diagnose yourself with after a simple WebMD search.

I am nervous with good reason, I am screening my finished film Door Mouse for the first time. Now before you ask, no, its not going to be out soon. Movies have an excruciatingly long life of development/production/distribution before you half watch them on some streaming platform while you scroll through instagram, half naked, covered in Cheeto dust.

This is not a slight against you, I do the same thing, I think it’s a computer thing. I only started really watching movies when I bought a little projector from Best Buy, something about the bright light and having to make the room dark. I think a theater experience is important. It creates a dark portal in which to disappear into a world. This is why I am currently nervous, because I am going to watch my film, in a theater, for the first time, with an audience.

Recent research suggests that left-handedness may also be a factor in the severity of PLMD. The University of Toledo Medical Center in Ohio found that 94 percent of left-handed people with PLMD experienced movements on both sides of their body while sleeping, compared with just 69 percent of right-handed patients.

I am not left handed.

I am nervous because I have the stupid, self-involved, and ultimately foolish desire for people to like my film. This is a dangerous game. You can’t make people happy. The point of art is not to please. But within all makers of things lives this pathetic monster of validation that screams “please like it or I’ll die.”

I have tamed this monster in recent years, but every once in a while it rears it ugly head and screeches it’s horrible roar, and I have to politely, yet sternly, remind it that I stopped giving a shit about the opinions of others quite a while ago.

The movie is done. There is nothing more to do. I have given 5 years trying to get it made, 1 full year of nothing but making it and every moment since I finished obsessing that it isn’t done. “Movies aren't finished, they are abandoned.”

anyway I’m nervous, that’s my point.

I’m going to the screening now, I’ll finished this when I’m back.

I’m back.

It went well.

I’m not nervous anymore.

-A

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