Sometimes, like most people my age, it seems I wake up with the perpetual fear that my best days are behind me. Sometimes that is a relief considering how exhausting some of those days were and other times that thought scares me to death.
Back in May 2016 I went though one of the strangest most bizarre experiences of my life and was only held together away from death because one of my best friends in the world was their to keep me from going so far off the edge as to turn my 30th birthday into my first funeral.
When I got back to Alabama I had a lead on a steady job at one of the local news stations . . . that fell through.
When I got back to Alabama I had a girlfriend whom I loved who had a kid I wanted to take care of like a father . . . 4 months later I realized what some of my friends had already told me and cut it off after I'd started to pick out a ring.
Three months prior to moving back to Mobile I found out that the very mentor I'd had since I was a kid, who got me my first production gig when I was a kid back in 1999, had died of a horrible disease.
Two years prior to that incident my Father had died violently.
After moving I was able to work on some great productions such as "Gerald's Game" and "Get Out" and even a cool commercial shoot for the State of Alabama I've still never seen but hope to one day. After I realized that they were going to cut the film incentives and a lot of productions and production friends were leaving Mobile for places like Birmingham and New Orleans I realized I needed a regular job which brings me to where I am today.
Last week a project I helped out on I had the pleasure of seeing on a giant screen in a beautiful theatre. The person who made the film had told me I was an inspiration to their passion. A theatre full of people clapping over a small film made almost entirely out of passion reminded me why I even got into film and media in the very first place. I'd spent nearly a decade making films for other people through the tedious process of mountains of paperwork and even larger mountains of egos I'd completely forgot what it feels like to fuel a passion project for little to no money but for the love of the project itself. That moment alone threw as spark back inside me I hope becomes as big as the fires that were inside me when I initially moved my ass from Mobile to the West Coast.
I've been working and writing a side-project I'm deeply, deeply, deeply passionate about but the quicksand of this fast paced world and the depression that sinks in when I see the domino effect of things I've lost in the recent years seems to sink my abilities to put the hammer down onto the steel and deep into the anvil to make this thing. Despite all my setbacks I am determined to finish it and this project fuels my passions away from my hobbies, friends, and the bottom rung of Maslow's needs I currently am only a step or two above subsisting on.
“For what it’s worth... it’s never too late, or in my case too early, to be whoever you want to be. There’s no time limit. Start whenever you want. You can change or stay the same. There are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you’ve never felt before. I hope you meet people who have a different point of view. I hope you live a life you’re proud of, and if you’re not, I hope you have the courage to start over again.” - F. Scott Fitzgerald. "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button".
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