| Where
did the time go? One minute it's 1995, and I'm a skinny, gray-hairless
smarty pants graduating high school, getting ready to embark
on a college/post-grad adventure that would lead to a no doubt
lucrative, successful, and acclaimed career as a triple-threat
filmmaker (writer/director/actor); the next it's 2005, and
I'm shuffling into my small, overpriced Santa Monica apartment,
tired from my ten hour work day entering data and filing folders
in a florescent-lit cubicle, seventy pounds heavier with more
gray hairs than can be ignored. Instead of making phat cash
on screenplays and books, I'm still writing for free
on the side, dreams of filmmaking success pretty much behind
me as I hope to kick ass at my office work skills so as to
get hired on in a staff position for extra job security, maybe
with a bit of a raise so I don't have to sweat paying my bills
every month. Dreams are in their death throws, having been
bludgeoned with the blunt object that is for many of us known
as "real life." This was not be the ideal time to
find an envelope addressed to me from Waverly High School,
containing a bright orange sheet of paper inviting all Waverly
Tigers from the Class of '95 to a TEN YEAR reunion, complete
with an "ice cream social" for the whole family.
Ack!
The five year reunion had been easily ignored. Sure, I was
still in Ohio then, working at a bookstore, but those pipedreams
were still within, or at least closer to, my grasp. Now...
NOW, though, here was proof that it'd been a whole DECADE
since I graduated high school, full of hopes and dreams and
not too very lacking in confidence. How disillusioned that
seventeen-year-old, white toothed, grinnin' jackass would've
been if he'd had a glimpse into his not bad, but thoroughly
mediocre future. His future that is my present TEN MOTHERFUCKING
YEARS LATER.
Looking back, the four years at the small, community college
I attended because I could "almost" afford it (with
scholarships, grants, and the dreaded, as yet not paid off
loans), excelling pretty well, though a fairly large-ish fish
in an arguably small-ish pond (though filled with more than
its share of kick ass fish), acting, writing, and directing--
still full of ego, still, in a way, "on track."
It was after that... not putting forth any effort to get into
film school, instead deciding to spend a year at home with
the family to save money... followed by baby steps to one
of the coasts... maybe more of a "crawl"... moving
to the medium-sized Columbus, Ohio for a year that turned
into four due to, honestly, losing my guts (and, to be honest
instead of mopey, meeting some terrific people); being afraid
of making a big change... that year long pit stop in Milwaukee
from which I still haven't recovered (though at least one
good thing came from it)... so much time passed by. I stopped
diligently working on my craft; buying DVDs and going to movies
instead of making them like I'd planned. Taking every "easier"
route that fell in my lap.
It's maybe just my nature to focus on the missed opportunities
as I stare at that Ten Year Reunion invitation. Ignoring the
good times and many growing experiences in this moment of
whiny reflection. Things haven't gone as that skinny kid had
planned, but it's not like I'm a total failure. Yet. My filmmaking
career currently consists of a script I started writing during
college in the option-signed hands of producers that alternately
love my writing and think they need a new writer... this story
I've been working on for so long equally likely to
stay on the page or become a movie I'd never envisioned. Still,
they initially liked my screenplay enough to option it, and
that helped pay for my five-year-later-than-planned move to
L.A., for love not of film but of a woman, which is infinitely
more important. And sure, I have yet to make a living with
writing these often self-indulgent but sometimes amusing words...
they still have found their way into various publications--
a few of which I really like (including the footnote).
This is me struggling to find the silver lining many close
to me point
out until exhausted by my sometimes "there ain't nuthin'
in that damn glass" attitude.
Two years shy of thirty, I have to continually remind myself
that all is not lost. Yeah, I missed that first movie by my
personal twenty-five-years-old mark, and I still fret entry
level jobs on the outskirts of the industry that I now often
wonder why I ever wanted to be a part of for reasons I just
don't get anymore, really wishing I had more tangible (yet,
often, much more important and useful) aspirations... If I'd
wanted to be a librarian or therapist or something, odds are
my dreams could have been realized by now. I so wish, at times
like these, that I had always wanted to be a teacher. A much
nobler profession than "making shit up" and "playing
pretend"-- yet much easier to get into. Still, I can
put food on the table (often too much) and live a decent life.
I just thought that by the time I got this goddamned Class
of '95 Ten Year Reunion invite, I'd be able to go and maybe
chat with old friends who'd seen my movie at the theaters
or on video... or maybe read my book or at least saw it on
the shelves of some bookstore once...
Not going to happen, though. I can live with that because,
well, what choice to I have? And I know no one, not my close
friends I kept in touch with, nor the ones I've lost touch
with over the years, would give me grief for not turning out
how I'd dreamed back in high school... at least not to my
face (which is all that matters when you think about it).
Odds are, many of them haven't turned out the way they thought
would, either. Be any of this nonsense going through my head
as it may, the decision of whether or not I am going to go
is completely hypothetical as there's no way I could afford
a plane ticket back to Ohio right now. Still... even if I
could... Nah. No way in fuck. Nope. Seriously. Hell fucking
no.
Maybe by the time the Twenty Year Reunion invite comes around,
those movies will have come out, some books published. Or,
if not, hopefully by then I'll have the wisdom to recognize
the good in my life and stop wishing I could live up to the
clueless standards of some string bean, cocky, punk ass kid
straight out of a small town high school who doesn't know
fuck about shit. |
