"Time passes in moments. Moments which rushing past, define the path of a life just as surely as they lead towards its end." -Dana Scully in "all things"
I think I may be having a slight “fifth” life crisis. I’m 22 years old, three months out of college, and the thought that I have 80+ years left on this giant blue/green marble we call Planet Earth seems almost incomprehensible. I didn’t become who I am today until around two years ago (it took me 20 years to grow up – I was a really slow beginner), so I tend to think of my life really starting my junior year of college.
As I mentioned in a previous blog entry about life in Florida after graduation, I really love my job and my co-workers. However, the realization that I’m not in school anymore, that there isn’t a set path for me to follow, is a little frightening. In college, you tend to have an idea of what to work toward every year:
Get good grades + participate in extracurricular activities + do well in your summer internship + (probably most important) schmooze with the right people = Get a job after graduation that will make you lots of money and/or happy.
I guess you could say there is a path I could follow post-college given my background. The next ten years of my life seem almost planned out – I’d spend 3-4 years at my current job, go to business school, work for another company at a higher position with a higher salary, and get married.
The fact that there is a template I’m supposed to follow makes me not want to follow it. I don’t even think that’s the path I want to take. (But given how naïve I probably am now about what I want, it’s best to regard whatever I say next with a huge pound of salt. In fact, I’ll probably look back at what I wrote a year from now and laugh my ass off).
My goals (at this point in time anyway) include starting my own payments company and becoming a billionaire so that I can start my own movie studio and bankroll/produce huge event spectacle films – ones with budgets of $50 million plus. I want to make movies that people are excited to see, not ones I have to beg people to watch. I’d also like to marry Conan O’Brien but that might be a bit of a stretch. Check back with me in 20 years and see how I’m doing.
Just last week, I decided to start on a small scale with that goal and bankroll short films with budgets of $1000-$5000. Any dollar not going toward my rent, food, or 401K is going toward my “movie-making” fund. I decided to stop talking about “building my dream movie studio” and actually do it. The stories that would be brought to the screen are ones I’ve created.
One that my friend Stephen Guilbert and I are currently working on is about a college girl on the verge of graduation who has an emotional affair with an older married friend (not autobiographical, I swear). I see it being shot Before Sunrise/Before Sunset style. The second one I’m writing now is more of a TV pilot-style 21 minute screenplay about two people getting used to life after college. Given what a big fan I am of sexual tension, this screenplay is positively drenched in it. It’ll be like Scully and Mulder for the young adult set. The dialogue veers on Gilmore Girls territory, and the acting infringes upon Arrested Development.
I never thought three months ago that I’d be spending almost all my time outside of work writing creative stories. Once I got into the work force, I started to notice a lot of things about life and people that I unwittingly began putting down on paper. After a while, I realized that I could create stories and funny dialogue out of my observations and began to write.
I just have to say one thing about creative writing – it’s REALLY HARD. Lines and dialogue will often fly into of my head at random times during the day (the best ones often leap into my brain right as I’m about to fall asleep – I guess that’s when I’m most meditative), and I usually collect those thoughts instantly so I don’t forget later. Sometimes, I can’t think of anything novel or interesting (ironically enough, this usually happens when I sit down with the intent of writing) and I just want to cry because the writer’s block is so maddeningly intense.
It’s usually at those points when I wonder how the hell Mitch Hurwitz was able to write his Arrested Development scripts, how he was able to create such a great flow between his dialogue (Hurwitz is the king of wordplay), characters, and situations, how he was able to make everything make sense. I’ve come to the conclusion that he must be some kind of genius.
Although I usually spend my free time writing, I’ve begun to notice the exact number of weeks that have been passing me by, and wondering what I have to show for it. I sometimes get restless and stir-crazy on the weekends, wondering if my writing or what I do outside of work is going to produce anything of value, if I’ll have anything to show for myself a year from now. This feeling of uneasiness is hard to get rid of. No wonder so many writers drink or, in Elizabeth Gilbert’s words, are “alcoholic manic-depressives.”
I’ve begun to notice the minutes ticking away on my life. I read a lot of movie reviews and one of the things people write if they hated the film is, “That’s two hours of my life I’m never getting back.” Given what I’ve noticed about how most people spend their life, that’s the least of their concerns. They should be more concerned about not wasting their life on the trivial matters we burden ourselves with everyday.
People at work will often mention something relating to time that highlight the gravitas of it. Someone will mention that her 22-year-marriage anniversary is coming up and I’ll suddenly realize that’s how long I’ve been alive. I mentioned one day that I was born in ’88, that I was a child of the ‘90s, and one of my older co-workers looked at me in shock, “Holy COW!”
I think that I’m lucky to have some semblance of an idea of what it is I’d like to accomplish in my life. I may not know how exactly I’ll get there (in my mind, I see a dusty, never-ending road, something out of a Jack Kerouac novel) but I know I’m not getting any younger. Time may be a very abstract concept but it can sneak up and whack me in the head with a frying pan without warning. I really, REALLY hope I’m utilizing my time well so it doesn’t.
"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart." - Steve Jobs
