I'm 34. I am a very iron clad cliche - too old to be fun and whimsical and too young to just give up. I'm at that place where I am looking back-looking back hurts my neck. I'm going to admit something. ten yrs. ago to the date I thought I was going to be a very famous screenwriter and possibly director. At that time I was actually writing and doing things. I was not behind - in fact I was ahead of the game. Life was moving forward. I finally made the friends that I had always wanted my whole life in Film School. I finally found the nerve to change my lifestyle and lose weight and become a whole girl by halving myself. I became a fixture in a scene that I felt at home with- and had real dreams. Now I am standing at the precipice of a decision to leave that dream. One may think that this is extreme thinking. After all you can always write. But it's not just the act of physical creation that joins you to this life. It's being present in the scene. It's working the connections it's being "a filmmaker" I was never a film maker. I never felt comfortable telling people that. I was never confident in my ability to write. I was always confident however in my opinions. I thought I had something very important and smart to say to the world. I thought this would be how.
Last saturday I sat through a three hour examination on Psychology. It was the most I had worked in yrs. I studied for a month every aspect of the brain, the endocrine system, the sensory modalities, all 150 yrs. of psychological history and theory, the implicit inner-workings of memory, statistics. To be honest- I needed this test. I needed to know that I still had a functioning above parr brain - it's the one thing I have been lynch-pinning my thread-barring ego onto. I hope I did well. I need something to offer up to my loved ones and say, "here, look at this- I did something!' i don't even know if I will make the deadlines ofr school or if I will be accepted in. I don't know if I will make a great therapist. But i know this- I have no qualms or fear about trying- nor do I doubt the necessity of my calling. What I fear is not that I will fail, but that this success will not heal the loss of my failures. What I fear is that I will not be able to overcome regret and therefore how will I help others to move on past their own life traumas and mistakes. Scratch that- I don't fear that- I'll lie. This is what I fear. What is going to happen every time I see a beautiful film that lifts my soul and is executed so artfully that I come to tears. I use to love that experience because it reminded of what I wanted to make- how shall I love these things now? How shall I honor my colleagues w/out wondering if they are pitying me or worse feeling disdain for me because i am the picture of their worse fear- art impotence- failure. Failure Failure Failure. Its an ugly word I know -but I keep thinking that if I purge it enough from my brain it will somehow blossom into opportunity for change. I'm not quite buddhist enough for this enlightened thought.
And there are the larger implications of these decisions we make- after all i am forming my life views as i make these movements. At what point is it ok to let go and admit that you are not good enough- maybe never was. Is that even possible- or was it always a lack of faith? What is worse is that I just wish I could know of one other person who went through this process with me who is also exchanging the romantic notion of art for something else.
