SWEATING MY WAY TO ANOTHER PORTLAND ADVENTURE

Tonight, my Tuesday night 6:30 - 9:30 screenwriting course begins at NW Film Center in downtown Portland. Teacher will be Randall Jahnson. If you've been following my bucket list quest, you'll recall that I took time off from rewriting novels to write a science fiction film two summers [or so?] back. I enjoyed the process and thought I might be able to do that in my declining memory years. One-hundred pages of film script is easier to keep in mind than a 500 page novel. Two of my novels are open to turning into film scripts. 

For the past week, I've been full of fear about the course, telling myself I have nothing more to say, telling myself I'll be out of place among young writers, imagining they'll laugh at this 79 year old codger trying to turn out film scripts. I questioned myself violently, doubting everything about myself and hit myself over the noggin with my financially unsuccessful writing career. I experienced moments of fear that reminded me of the fears I felt when I put the bottle down 40-some years ago, i.e. how will I be funny and pick up girls...I'll be so alone, etcetera. One fear was about the expense of parking in Portland, then I looked into taking the Max line in from PDX but was deterred from that by my fear of standing at 9:30 pm in downtown Portland waiting for the Max line to show. They run the last two runs to PDX at 9:55 and 10:30. I truly want to learn to take the Max line into Portland, so I'm compromising tonight. I drove in to park expensively in a garage near the school, then I'll look around as I leave the school at 9:30 to see how scary it might feel at the stop I'd need to wait at.