Nice Doggie & Cactus D.

RIGHT NOW, the mental picture of myself I carry forth with me is that of a Black Lab swimming along, swimming, head barely above water. Not happy about it, not sad, just pushing forward with a certain, well, doggedness.

I don't know where I've conjured that image from. Might have been a stray news report, or a film, or a story I heard -- just some random image burned on the back of the retina; photographic detritus from an oversaturated age.

I'm back in Toronto for the weekend for the wedding of a good friend, after a weird week of work on The Rock. I spiked a 103 degree fever last weekend, burned through and churned out a 2 day draft of the new show that I was pretty happy with. Then the b'y's took a "Newfoundland Pass" and I was even more happy with it. We have a voice. As the others details stutter and start and move forward and back, we have a voice, and that's tremendously exciting to me.

Coming up is an even busier week, and a shift toward the practicals of how do you actually make these scripts? We have eight days an episode, and as one of our other Writers, the inimitable BadLady, says, "I have never had eight days in my life." Yet shoving scenes and characters and locations into a box -- well, it's a challenge, y'know. It certainly is.

But I'm up for it.

I'm up for a lot, it seems, these days. Nothing like the feeling of positive work to lift spirits. I've got a big crush on everybody I'm working with now, shaggy and still-kickin-the-tires as we all are.

Even though the storm clouds for the Canadian industry have rarely been darker, there are the people who continue to inspire. And hard work seems to pay off, eventually. I think.

Paul Gross is playing the Devil on U.S. TV this fall. Come on. How can you not enjoy the thought of that?

And I've gotten an email from a sometime correspondent about making that hardest of hard choices: choosing to leap and hope the writing work will appear rather than take the safe job where the learning curve is flat. That may not stack up on the courage meter with fighting cancer or patrolling Afghanistan, but it's gutsy nonetheless.

I've read Canadian pilots in the last month or so that are as good as any U.S. ones I've seen in the last few years. I've started to see a change in reporting, where the ghetto of not talking about the Canadian shows in the same article as the U.S. shows has started to break down. I've seen good worthy shows and news like the fact that Murdoch Mysteries has been sold to PBS in the USA -- which is a perfect place for it.

And I came home to my empty, still condo last night to find Norman has grown marvellous much.

Norman is my cactus. I got him for my office at the beginning of the 2nd season of the Ex-show. I dream of having a dog, but I live alone and keep weird hours (in many different cities) so for now, that's impractical. Norman the cactus is, in fact, the only living thing that depends on me. Okay, sure, you can leave him for four weeks without water, but look, look how he thrives. I mean, pretty soon I'm going to have to get him a bigger mug to sit in.

Okay, scratch all the positivity above. I'm waxing rhapsodic about a cactus. My life is fucking sad.

Psych.

Sorry haters. Norman is my other metaphor of the moment. Improbable -- a desert plant thrives in an empty condo in Toronto as the keeper of all that condo's stuff toils in Canada's most easterly point to make TeeVee that some people will run down no matter how good it winds up being. And yet I say, fuck'em. The dog keeps swimming, snout just above the waterline. Throw rocks if you want. He's not stopping. Norman lives, he thrives. And yes he's just a cactus and you should be able to commit to more than that to have a well-rounded life, but the cactus is a start. Like me, it has sharpness that'll prick you if you're not careful. But look at the top, that delicate little curve. There it is. You know what that is? It's the simplest thing in the world, the very objective correlative of optimism. Look at Norman; he's reaching for the sun.

And Fuckya if you can't get on board for that.