"too many things too many things"

In which Nathaniel tries to break the not-writing cycle by getting high on Julianne Moore

Let's just? Let's have fun now! Let's just go and go and go, because it's over. There's just too many things, too many things, too many things. Too many things.

Does the movie line you quote the most in every day life say something awful or essentially true about you? I fear this is the case though I can only speak for myself.

While I am neither a redhead nor a porn star, and have literally never done a line of cocaine in my 50 plus years on the planet, I have felt spiritually connected in a quite concerning way to Juianne Moore’s “Amber Waves” from the moment I first laid eyes on her in Boogie Nights (1997). To this day, twenty-nine years later (gulp) I still find myself muttering “there’s just too many things, too many things, too many things” like I’m high-as-a-kite Amber in a pink nightgown pacing back and forth in my bedroom before flying in another unexpected direction or towards a different conversation altogether (”Will you be my mommy?”) Modern science and my therapist would probably call this neurodivergence but I just think of it as a cursed mantra about creativity and fandom, when they’re inextricably linked and multi-headed.

“too many things too many things too many things” is how I absorb everything I love (I wish so often that I only cared about one art form and not... all of them!) and how I approach and derail every creative pursuit. As soon as I start a project I am duty bound to complicate it to some unwieldly degree preserving it in an agitated state -- not like an infamous mosquito in amber but like a fly in a glass jar ricocheting about until it dies from chaos or lack of oxygen.

I will give you three examples. 1) I have been eager to write a book about a particular actress and a particular director (in tandem) for some time and have started that outline and book proposal numerous times. 2) there’s also a web comic I have been toying with launching (for literally decades) that started as a silly weekly strip idea and morphed into something truly epic and so daunting with world-building demands that it never materalized. 3.) Finally, there is the more relatable (to The Film Experience readers) ongoing desire to investigate past film years to a thorough enough extent that I can reveal my own ballots about the year’s best in my 40+ Film Bitch Awards categories (you can see 2025’s list here if you have long ago tuned out and missed them).

While the latter desire is perpetual it only threatened to become a highly specific series about two years ago (and no “episodes” were produced.) In all cases these mammoth projects are derailed not from disinterest or artistic inability but from distractions of other similarly giant writing projects, or other series or social media experimentation ideas, big and small. Lately I’ve been wondering how to break the cycle and actually write regularly again? In some ways daily blogging, which I did for roughly (gulp) 15 years with another non-daily 5 years on either side, was the ideal solution, since it involved short regular bursts. But blogging gave way to newsletters, and especially to social media and YouTube channels none of which I ever got the hang of and also wasn’t as fascinated by in the case of the latter —I don’t want to be looking at my own face all the time. Looking at faces is what movie stars are for!

The solutions I come up with to break the not-writing silence are never a workable “choose one thing and stick with it!” discipline or even a “give up!” resignation. The solutions are also ever evolving and often ricochet about and take on new very confusing lives. Lately I’ve been wondering if it is possible to just start all projects all at once, like a Nathaniel multi-verse, with no expectation that any of them could ever be finished and no worries about doing any of them justice but just a chill, ‘go with the flow’ drop in and dash out approach?

So I’m going to try something… or, far more likely, too many things too many things too many things. Wish me luck.