Reexamining the Script by Weston J. Kathman There is a familiar script for those of us fortunate enough to grow up in the lilly-white suburbs of modern USA. The script allows for some variations here and there, but the general plotline is the same for everyone. Consider it analagous to a checklist. Made my parents proud. Check. Graduated high school. Check. Graduated college. Check. Got that post-graduate degree. Check. Got the job, the car, the house, the wife, the kids. Check. Check. Check. Check. Check. The point here is to accomplish these things with minimal fuss. Analyzing the script is not supposed to be part of the script. Somewhere between the post-graduate degree (a farcical stint in law school) and getting the much-coveted wife (a catastrophic engagement), I recklessly went off the script … crashing and burning. For several years I privately beat myself up for “not measuring up.” It was as if I deserved a Golden Raspberry for worst actor. My poor performance took a toll on my ego. But then I started wondering if maybe I had been in the wrong movie — like a miscasting. In other words, the standard script may have been ill-suited to my personality/psyche/inclinations/obsessions. Perhaps a person like me was bound for disaster and was lucky not to have ended up in far worse shape than I did. Maybe I would have been better served veering off the cookie-cutter script a lot earlier. These are the thoughts that bubble in my head these days. Is it time for me to develop a script all my own? To check out how recklessly I went off script several years ago, please see my autobiographical novel, "The Misadventures of Jack Chesterfield" — available for free Amazon Kindle downloads this upcoming OCTOBER 2 and 3. Here’s the link: amazon/Misadventures-Jack-Chesterfield-Weston-Kathman/dp/1475070888/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1374243741&sr=1-1
Posted on: Thu, 19 Sep 2013 17:47:36 +0000