Marissa Skudlarek, heralding in the New Year. All the questions at once.
What am I going to write my Theater Pub column about this week?
Isn’t it presumptuous to think that I will have something interesting to write about every two weeks till the end of time?
When will the end of time come, anyway?
Is this format cheesy?
How meta and self-indulgent can I get, anyway?
Is this café playing French music to commemorate the victims of the Charlie Hebdo attack or do they just always play French music?
Should I write about the Charlie Hebdo attack?
Do I have anything that’s actually worth saying about the Charlie Hebdo attack?
Do I have anything that’s actually worth saying about anything?
Do I have impostor syndrome?
Do I have depression?
Do all talented people fall prey to impostor syndrome that leads them to underestimate themselves, and do all untalented people fall prey to the Dunning-Kruger effect that leads them to overestimate themselves, and is that why the world’s in such a mess?
Where do I get off, dividing people into “talented” and “untalented”? Isn’t that presumptuous of me, too?
How can I cultivate compassion in my heart for all beings when I am frustrated by how much idiocy I see around me?
Is it ableist to call people idiots?
Is it fair to pull you down the rabbit holes of my mind?
If I were a man, would I be this concerned about seeming “presumptuous”?
If I were a man, would I have a large penis or a small one?
What does it say about me that I just wrote the previous sentence?
Is this column an example of a smart person underestimating herself or a fool overestimating herself?
How could Stuart pour out 5000 words on Monday when I’m struggling to get to 300 words?
Why do I have such a mental block?
Am I out of practice?
Am I coming down with a cold?
When this column is published, will it soon vanish into the sea of words that is the Internet, or will it haunt me for the rest of my days?
How can I be proud of myself in 2015?
How can I kindle a fire in myself, and have that fire be one of warmth and joy rather than one of anger and destruction?
Is that metaphor cheesy?
Would I have made that metaphor if I weren’t sitting next to a gas fire right now?
Are gas fires with fake logs tacky?
Is there anything in this world that cannot be met with words of disdain: “tacky,” or “presumptuous,” or “idiotic,” or “cheesy,” or “self-indulgent,” or dozens of other words that I have not even used in this column yet?
What, exactly, am I so afraid of?
Because this is all about fear, isn’t it?
Have I progressed at all in the last year, when I wrote on this blog about trying to operate out of a sense of joy and abundance, rather than fear and scarcity?
Do we ever progress, at all? Does the world?
Is it worse to be a naïve optimist or a cynical pessimist?
Why do we think that optimists are fools and pessimists are intelligent?
What could we accomplish if we reversed that? If optimism was considered intelligent – and pessimism would get you ridiculed?
Well, we’d probably get the Third Reich, wouldn’t we?
Dear God, how much of a pessimist am I?
Can I end this conversation with myself now that Godwin’s Law has been proven?
How foolish can I be, to speak of ending this conversation, when I live in my head and I know that it never ends?
And if I am a fool, why am I not an optimist?
Marissa Skudlarek is a San Francisco-based playwright and arts writer. Find her at marissabidilla.blogspot.com or on Twitter @MarissaSkud.
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