“For the people who don’t do drugs, or just do them occasionally, it’s something that becomes your life, and you belong. You finally hit bottom and you know who you are, because you can’t go any lower. When you find… a friendship that you wouldn’t have found anywhere else. Still and all, there’s a kind of intimacy with those that can go the distance. Sometimes you see the world so clearly… and you know just what to do, and just when to do it. Just what you should’ve done, and when you should’ve done it.” - from the film The Salton Sea
I definitely relate to the part about in life hitting bottom and knowing who you are, because you can’t go any lower, about finding friendships you wouldn’t have found anywhere else. (I don’t do drugs, but I can relate to the slacker type.)
Been thinking recently about my career, and about clarity. Realized that I had a career. Twice. And both places, well, went bankrupt within 5 years of laying my department off. So… that’s had very bad effects on my sense of identity and self-worth.
I’ve had a lot of time recently to think and see what’s happened… why I have friends who’ve accomplished so much more in their professions, and why I… haven’t. And I realize, at 32, I’d be farther along if those places at which I worked at age 21 and 24 didn’t collapse and file for bankruptcy. What if I moved up, instead of those companies collapsing?
It’s kind of hard thinking that way, sort of like the boxer who got knocked down hard and often in the early rounds. You start doubting yourself, doubting your training, doubting your inner voice and sense of confidence that brought you to the impasse at which you meet yourself.
I bought a yo-yo recently from this nice spot on my recent trip to Colorado Springs. And… I knew that I was going to draw criticism from someone at one time or another for playing with a yo-yo. But it’s a hot yo-yo, and I knew what I was doing, and it came with a DVD. And I began getting really good. Though yo-yo play, I re-learned that I’m a creative, and yo-yo play is an amazing art form. I love expressing myself through yo-yo play.
The more I continued investing myself in practicing yo-yo play, the more I realized that now is not really a great time career-wise for creatives like me. Nowadays, business professionals are lauded. Nurses, doctors, teachers and the like. Physical therapists, health care workers. But what about magicians? Orchestral conductors? Ballet dancers? Television production assistants? Is there no glory in that, no dignity? I’m trying to figure out where I fit in, whether I should try to fit my square peg into a round hole like everyone else, be a nurse or teacher or something… or become more fully myself.
And I’m realizing that maybe the best way to forecast my better tomorrow… is to remember where I came from… and how far I’ve come. My television internships, video production internships, video game production job and DVD production jobs… these weren’t flukes, random or meaningless. I had a career path.
Maybe It’s time to put my hands and ear to the ground… and reconnect with what makes me more fully myself.
“You don’t work in production because it’s going to get you a rewarding career and good life… you do it because you can’t not.” - a television production professor I had
