The name of my film is back to Beyond the Mat. Orig­i­nally, the movie I’m pro­duc­ing was called Beyond the Mat but because there’s a WWE doc­u­men­tary from 1999 of the same name, we were advised to change our title to some­thing else. After much debate and con­ster­na­tion, we changed it to Near­fall. When we started the project back in 2006, only seven years after the doc­u­men­tary, it made sense that there might be con­fu­sion in the mar­ket­place. But we’ve always retained a fond­ness for our orig­i­nal name and now that things have picked up for the movie again, we’ve decided that a decade is enough water under the bridge and to rename our film Beyond the Mat.

Here’s a quick update. WE HAVE DISTRIBUTION! It’s a small com­pany call Catch22. We’ll be their first the­atri­cal release but we have some Hol­ly­wood Heavy Hit­ters on the team. I can’t dis­close who they are yet but there should be a Vari­ety arti­cle com­ing out in the near future.

Finally, the other big news is that we have signed on our pol­ish­ing edi­tor. He’s the Acad­emy Award win­ner, Scott Con­rad edi­tor of the orig­i­nal Rocky. Maybe you’ve heard of it. I remem­ber when we first started this film, we kept ref­er­enc­ing Rocky and how we wanted to be the next clas­sic sports film. No one would have thought that by the end of this long and ardu­ous jour­ney that we’d actu­ally be work­ing with the edi­tor of that sem­i­nal sports movie. Ask any­one for their top 5 sports movies and chances are Rocky will be on that list. Scott Con­rad helped cre­ate the mod­ern sports movie genre. Now he’s putting his skill and tal­ent into MY sports movie. Isn’t that crazy? Never in the wildest dreams of a first time film­maker would we ever think this was a possibility.

Here’s a brief update on some other things. The legal issue with the film was recently set­tled and that took a huge bur­den off of my chest. Because of the law­suit and the cash issues that it caused, I had to get a day job. I started work­ing at a mar­ket­ing com­pany whose main client is Suzuki. Then the econ­omy fell apart and the auto indus­try was slapped across the face with cut­backs. My com­pany was no excep­tion. I got put to part time sta­tus at only 12 hours a week. We the free­lanc­ing needed to make ends meet, the law­suit, and a moun­tain of debt; I was in no mood to work on Beyond the Mat. That’s also why I stopped writ­ing. But all that is over now. I’ve been back to full time since May 1st. We got the fin­ish­ing funds we need for our film. The law­suit is com­pletely over. I’ve paid off all of my legal fees. We’ve picked up dis­tri­b­u­tion. And we even have some guest celebri­ties appear­ing in our film. We shot pick­ups with Ken Sham­rock a few months ago and we are final­iz­ing our con­tract with Kurt Angle to film at the end of July.

Van the direc­tor has been stressed about sched­ul­ing and I have been hav­ing trou­ble moti­vat­ing myself through all the tribu­la­tions, but I’m feel­ing like I’m get­ting back into the groove. It’s time for me to rally to troops and get this baby done.

So I have recently become a vic­tim of the cur­rent eco­nomic down­turn. I don’t like to use the word vic­tim because no one is really a vic­tim. We should all be work­ing towards mak­ing our­selves indis­pens­able at our places of work. But some­times it can’t be helped. If a com­pany doesn’t have money, it doesn’t have money. And although it’s not good to blame your­self and wal­low in guilt, this would be an appro­pri­ate time to reassess your­self, your skills, and your cur­rent direc­tion in life. Take a moment to ignore the impend­ing bar­rage of bills that are about to start falling on your head and think hard about whether you need a course adjust­ment in where the hell you’re steer­ing your life.  Based on that, I have come up with 8 sim­ple steps to stay­ing sane, stay­ing pro­duc­tive, and prop­erly nav­i­gat­ing unemployment.

1. Find a sup­port system

No one is an island. It’s true. Find some­one you trust: a friend, a sig­nif­i­cant other, fam­ily. Some­one to share the bur­den of this stress­ful sit­u­a­tion. If you’ve done every­thing you can but still can’t find some­one, maybe you have big­ger prob­lems than unem­ploy­ment and the real rea­son you got fired was due to you per­son­al­ity and not the econ­omy. But this isn’t a post about how to find friends and even the friend­less need to sur­vive. So I sug­gest to those peo­ple, get a dog. We all need inter­ac­tion to help alle­vi­ate the stress. Hell, get a ger­bil or a cat for that mat­ter. The point is, don’t deal with this alone.

2. Stick to a reg­i­mented schedule

No going to bed at 4am and wak­ing up at 1pm. You’re out of col­lege and you need to feel pro­duc­tive. Oth­er­wise, you’re just going to enter a down­ward spi­ral of self loathing and depres­sion. You should already be use to wak­ing up at a cer­tain time for work, don’t change your sched­ule. Go to bed at the same time and wake up at the same time that you would have were you still employed. Not only will it give you a sense of nor­malcy, but you’ll also feel a lit­tle more pro­duc­tive. I have also com­mit­ted myself to tak­ing my lunch hour at the same time that I did when I was at work. In addi­tion, I have sched­uled out my day with spe­cific tasks to help me accom­plish the goals I defined and out­lined in Step 5.

3. Do some­thing physical

You need to stay healthy. As much as peo­ple hate to say it, a youth­ful appearence plays a big role in whether you will get hired. A seden­tary lifestyle for even a few weeks can play havoc on your appear­ance. Your skin color and tone, your pos­ture, your over­all appear­ance. There’s noth­ing bet­ter to help you look younger than some good old fash­ioned exer­cise. I’m per­son­ally going to med­i­tate each morn­ing for 10 min­utes right after I wake up and then go for a swim. In addi­tion, I meet three times a week with my friends at the gym. This also con­tribute to Step 1, inter­ac­tion with friends. And even though this might be more exer­cise than you’ve ever had, hey, what else are you gonna do with all your free time. Might as well get healthy.

4. Tighten your belt

You have no more income. Stop spend­ing money! Com­mon sense right? You’re not the United States Gov­ern­ment after all. Start look­ing for places that you can cut cor­ners. In addi­tion to not going out to din­ner as much, get cre­ative about it. The lease on my Mer­cedes is up in a few months. I’m going to see if I can return it early with­out penalty and get rid of my car pay­ment. I can drive my mom’s jalopy around for a few months until I get back on my feet. I also turned an extra room in my house into my office. Although I hate to give it up, the cur­rent hous­ing sit­u­a­tion should make it fairly easy to rent out.

5. Keep busy and stay productive

For God’s sake, keep busy. Day­time tele­vi­sion is for old peo­ple and house­wives, not the down­sized. Find a pur­pose. Make daily tasks and weekly objec­tives. In addi­tion to your resume build­ing and job search­ing, you need to find some­thing to fill the rest of the daily void. Read that book you’ve never had the time to read. Learn a new lan­guage. Learn a new skill. Build your­self a web­site. Start a project.

I have a laun­dry list of things that I haven’t had enough time to do and now I’m tak­ing advan­tage of the free time by stay­ing pro­duc­tive. I have a doc­u­men­tary that I’ve been putting together on my off time that I can now focus on. I have a few screen­play ideas that I’m plan­ning on mov­ing to stage two. I also have a few tele­vi­sion ideas that I have been mean­ing write treat­ments for so that I can pitch. I’m also been mean­ing to pol­ish up my reel and build by busi­ness web­site. The great part is that all of these goals will help me out of the hole that is unemployment.

6. Get outside

It is very easy to stay in your paja­mas and just loaf around the house. But if you do too much of that, I starts to bleed into your pro­duc­tive­ness. Going to apply for jobs on the inter­net? Go to a library or a cof­fee shop with inter­net. Read­ing the Clas­si­fieds? Do it some­where pub­lic. In addi­tion to feel­ing like a part of soci­ety, the change of scenery will do you good. Vit­a­min D from the sun has been proven to fight depression.

7. Be hum­ble and believe in yourself.

Be hum­ble with your­self and you won’t take some of the sac­ri­fices you’ll be mak­ing as hard. Although you need a cer­tain amount of con­fi­dence to sur­vive in today’s world, don’t think of your­self as invin­ci­ble. Sh#t hap­pens to the best of peo­ple. If you stop think­ing about your­self as Super­man, you might have a chance to for­give the sit­u­a­tion, get over your­self, and move for­ward. You’re going to have to make some choices that you think are beneath you and being hum­ble will help you swal­low that pill called pride. I was for­tu­nate to just be cut to part time, but if I had been fired out­right, it would have been hard to not take it per­sonal. But you just have to believe that your self worth isn’t depen­dent on how oth­ers per­ceive you. You can never know the exten­u­at­ing cir­cum­stances that moti­vated which depart­ment got cut. For all you know, Joe Schmoe over in receiv­ing might be the nephew of the long lost sis­ter of the boss.

I’ve been pretty pub­lic with my down­siz­ing. I unabashedly broad­casted my job sta­tus on Face­book. And I’ve twit­tered it as well as writ­ten about it here on my blog. Sure there’s peo­ple out there that I’d rather not know, then again maybe there’s peo­ple our there that might have a job for me. I believe enough in myself to know that my friends won’t judge me based on my cur­rent employ­ment sit­u­a­tion. And if they do and con­tact me less, then bet­ter for me. Who needs friends like that.  I also have enough belief in myself that this is only a tem­po­rary sit­u­a­tion. This is some­thing that I will be able to look back upon as a minor hic­cup in the long road that is my career to suc­cess. And how we han­dle our­selves in the tough­est of times is the true marker of what kind of per­son we really are.

8. Get a new job

Get a new job dumb dumb. Use your new found free time to take stock of your skills, pol­ish up your resumen, renew acquain­tances, and hit the pave­ment hard. After all, you can’t stay job­less forever.

• just had my first foray into new age http://www.drzail.com The psy­cho babel was ques­tion­able but the adjust­ment was right on. #fb #
• @Sabri­naGee That’s ridonku­lous #
• Why are old peo­ple the slow­est dri­vers? Shouldn’t they be the MOST rushed? After all, they do have the short­est time left to live. #fb #
• New Post on my blog: Kogi BBQ stole their taco idea from ME!!!: Yes you read my title right,.. http://tinyurl.com/d579pb #
• Those must be fake! Look how skinny she is… That’d be phys­i­cally impos­si­ble! …but I bet you couldn’t drown her. *gulp *gulp #
• Those must be fake! Look how skinny she is… That’d be phys­i­cally impos­si­ble! …but I bet you couldn’t drown her. *gulp *gulp #fb #
• some peo­ple just don’t under­stand love. and sadly, those peo­ple will be doomed to never enjoy it. #fb #
• is the lat­est vic­tim of the eco­nomic down­turn. #
• hasn’t left the house all day. And hasn’t put a shirt on either. #fb #
• can’t take much more of this devil lan­guage. argh­h­hhh! my ears are bleed­ing! #fb #
• New Post on my blog: The best Red Vel­vet cup­cakes in LA are not from Sprinkes:
  There’s a de.. http://tinyurl.com/ctvms4 #
• New Post on my blog: The best Red Vel­vet cup­cakes in LA are not from Sprin­kles. http://www.kwongfucius.com #fb #

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• if you hate get­ting caught on cam­era at the club, wait till you see what you look like caught on video! #
• If we are more than just the sum of our parts, could it be our soul is the unquan­tifi­able por­tion of that sum? #fb #
• If ur an idiot in real life and have idiot thoughts, Fb sta­tus and Twit­ter just make it pos­si­ble for the world to know ur stu­pid quicker #fb #
• we are cur­rently in the mid­dle of a par­a­digm shift …but then again, when are we not? #
• every stereo­type is born from a grain of truth …and a moun­tain of racism #
• does not have a weak­ness for word games. his weak­ness IS word games. ..can’t spell. it’s a fact. #
• http://twitpic.com/275z3 — It’s so big! …that’s what she said. #
• Is about to pop is Kogi cherry. #fb #
• http://twitpic.com/29o3y — Not even open yet and there’s a line 25 deep. #
• http://twitpic.com/29o7m — Wait­ing for Kogi on sun­set and man­zanita #
• Some things never change. There are still Mex­i­cans inside the Kogi truck mak­ing my tacos. #
• http://twitpic.com/2asus — GTA Chi­na­town? Can’t wait to see if this is racist. #
• @vio­let­mae touche #
• @vio­let­mae you know I am just the hat­er­ade to your kool-aid #
• Lac­tose intol­er­ence and going to melt­ing pot on a date don’t match. #fb #

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• just sucker punched some bees in court. What I would give to be a fly on the wall of those damn liti­gious honey mak­ers. #
• thinks its funny when ugly girls say there r no cute guys at the club. Dont they real­ize guys r look­ing at them n say’n the EXACT same thing #
• has a love hate rela­tion­ship with his masseur Mr. Zhou. Some­times his war on my knots leaves col­lat­eral dam­age. Now on to the hot tub. #
• Even Obama haters are peo­ple too. They’re not just an annony­mous red color. That’s a harsh real­ity that I’m try­ing to come to terms with. #
• Wth? My 74 year old uncle uses skype and is talk­ing about wife swap­ping. This is turn­ing out into very weird din­ner. #
• is fas­ci­nated by old peo­ple talk­ing about tech­nol­ogy. Blue­tooth, GPS, skype. “It trav­els through the air!” #

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