Choose Yourself! Read Online Free PDF Page B

ONE PERSON HAVE CONTROL OVER YOUR LIFE?
    About twenty years ago, I realized I was tired of trying to be liked by others. I was constantly trying to package myself so I would be chosen for jobs, books, deals, partnerships, or love. Depending on the situation, I would put on an entirely new costume, a new mask, or a new set of lies, right down to political and religious beliefs. “Dan Quayle might be the greatest vice president ever,” I said to one girl as she lit up my cigarette even though I didn’t smoke, and I probably thought Dan Quayle was the worst choice for a vice president ever. And then when I leaned in for the kiss at the end of the date…“I don’t feel about you that way.” Rejected.
    I suffered two other rejections that thoroughly disgusted me to the point where I said, “That’s it. I’m choosing myself.”
    The first: I was pitching a TV show, III:am . Three a.m. The idea was to explore the flip side of life. From 7 a.m. to 8 p.m., the “normals” are outside, conducting their business. Dressing in their suits, getting the grande soy cappuccinos, kissing up to the boss, eating three meals, gossiping, watching TV, having a glass of wine at the end of a tough day, and finally cajoling themselves to sleep after tucking in all of their worries for another night of rest.
    When “normal” human beings wake up at three in the morning it’s usually because those worries have prematurely woken up before the dawn. “James! You have to worry about this.” And when it happens, we tremble. There’s absolutely nothing we can do at three in the morning about our regrets, our anxieties, our fears of loneliness or depression or poverty. The paranoia that creeps in from the cracks in the windows, from the cracks in our minds.
     
Here’s an exercise for those who typically wake up anxious and paranoid at three in the morning: instead of counting sheep to get back to sleep, count all the things you are grateful for. Even the negative parts of your life. Figure out why you should be grateful for them. Try to get up to one hundred.
    But what about the people who live only at three in the morning? People who are out and about, conducting their lives every day at those hours. Living a life completely opposite of the “normal.” I started going out at three in the morning on Tuesday and Wednesday nights. Not Saturdays, where everyone is out partying, but the nights where if you were around at three in the morning, there’s a reason. And it’s usually not a normal one.
    What I found was more than just prostitutes, their clients, drug dealers, and homeless people (although I certainly found a lot of them—and throw in the pre-op transsexuals and dominatrixes for good measure). I also found a whole class of people who did not fit into the conventional path of life and had to carve out their own. A path that only existed when nobody else was looking, when the lights were out, when 95 percent of the world was asleep. It was almost as if a 3 a.m. religion existed, one that was self-reliant and relished how the world can be lived upside-down but still lived to its fullest potential.
    For three years I interviewed people every week for the HBO website. During one of those years, I also took material and shot it as a pilot for HBO. HBO was very excited about it and threw some money behind the pilot.
    Then they rejected it.
    There was ONE executive at HBO, in particular, who could make or break my project with a simple “yes” or “no.” I was constantly afraid of her and what she was thinking. What would her mood be every time we went in with a new update?
    Finally she gave her verdict: “For material like this, you either need to show your neighbors fucking, or someone killing their mother while naked.” We had material pretty close to that but not quite as base or lowest common denominator.
    We were rejected. All it took was one person on a bad day. She was, and I think still is, head of HBO’s Documentaries