Passionate People Have Problems - Especially with the Paris Review

I am a really passionate person. I tell myself this is why I am not really all that successful. As some of you may know, I work on a really highly rated CBS show as a Casting Director. My father always asks me, "You studied English. Why aren't you writing for the show?"

"Duh, Daaaaad!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" I screech. "Because I don't want to."

See, passionate people like me have problems.My father should understand this - for a Protestant, he's one of the most passionate people I know.

When I say passionate, I mean the following synonyms from the thesaurus (remember those?):

SYNONYMS:          affection, affectivity, agony, anger, animation, ardor, dedication, devotion, distress, dolor, eagerness, ecstasy, excitement, feeling, fervor, fire, fit, flare-up, frenzy, fury, heat, hurrah, indignation, intensity, ire, joy, misery, outbreak, outburst, paroxysm, rage, rapture, resentment, sentiment, spirit, storm, suffering, temper, transport, vehemence, warmth, wrath, zeal, zest ANTONYMS:          calm, calmness I pretty much encompass all of the things in the above column and am the exact opposite of calm.  Truth is, I'd much rather be a writer for The Paris Review or a professor at UPenn teaching the Romantics than being a writer for some violent cop show. If I wrote for any show at all, it would involve daydreaming dogs who can talk. Sounds fascinating, I know. People always think it would be so simple to be a writer in New York. To be published. Well I am perishing in that department, hence the blog. And the cold harsh reality is that practically everyone here IS a writer and there is a lot of competition. I thought it was bad when I had to compete for a job in casting versus people named "Jade" and "Paris." Now in writing I have to compete against pedigreed pups from Philip Exexter Academy with parents who pay their rent. (A lot of alliteration and "p's" in this post, no?) I swear too much. I write too honestly. I write about blue collar, working class things. I write about things I know that others can't relate to - oh, the list goes on. My point is, it's not that easy to be a writer!