One Face, Two Face

Red Face, Blue Face

When you are someone who is trying to formulate your life and career outside of a cubicle, there’s a lot of running around like a chicken with your head cut off in an attempt to hold off the barbarians at the gate known as bills. If you are to pull off the self-reliant miracle, then you squeeze in the time to work on your art or small business when you clock out of your job. Unfortunately, your time is the least of the things in your life you give up and the lowest hurdle to leap. Your financial, emotional, and mental stability are constantly challenged. Social and family life are often put on the back burner, because you’ll inevitably find yourself in the quicksand of bearing responsibilities to other people who may need you. Maybe that is a youngest child and eldest son issue, I don’t know. Maybe I’ve watched too much Game of Thrones.

I know it comes off selfish on the surface, but the entrepreneurial and creative world is like walking a tightrope over the Grand Canyon (of which I just went and it’s scary). You can only celebrate with friends and family until you’ve crossed the depths and aren’t at risk of falling. It’s nothing personal. Just the way it is. Most people that chose that path wish it weren’t that way, due to the daunting nature of the journey, which is why you see many people quit despite their perceived talent and work ethic.

I am on Reddit because I have a death wish, and the screenwriting subreddit is one of the few forums I follow. I viewed it as a great way for a community to go to for those of us looking for feedback, advice, and a way to vent our frustrations. At one point, I didn’t have a frustration so much as a mood that I was in for a while. I was struggling to balance the late nights and early mornings of trying to work a 9 to 9 (wish it was 5) and trying to conjure up and put together that one script or film that was going to put me on the map. Here’s what I wrote:

BEING BURNED BY THE PURIFYING FIRE

I’m at a loss right now and I guess I just wanted to discuss this with the community who will relate.

I’m a nobody who grew up in various small to mid-size towns in the Pacific Northwest. My family fluctuated from lower-working to middle class. If my family gained any attention from people, it was often not for good reasons or major achievements until later in my childhood.

Because of this, I decided in early high school I will work my tail off to be the generation in my family to end the chaos. I wanted to become a writer and director. Writing and directing seemed like a good career. It was the only real talent I felt I had one iota of, and the only thing I had a burning desire to do. Turns out I never should’ve told myself that, because after high school it was ten years of fighting through financial strife, pumping gas to pay for school, and sleeping in my school’s library because I didn’t have a place to live. I got the degree I spent my 20s on, and tried to pursue my own career pursuits while in school.

When the pandemic started I hunkered down on my writing since I only had two part time jobs. I had time to create a writer’s boot camp for myself. I wrote 4 drafts of a short feature over the summer, took a short break to move back to California in the fall, wrote a short film in November and used December as a break and film festival budget scope. December was one of the biggest highs of my life since graduating college in 2019. I submitted my short film to a tiny film festival and was awarded a semi-finalist. I know it’s not super impressive, but I’ve never won any sort of placing award, let alone got gatekeepers to even look at my art, so for a nobody like me, it was a big deal. My parents used to often tell me, “with every high, a low is just around the corner”. I get what they meant. A fourth draft of a tv pilot I’ve been working on for 4 and a half years was rejected at a film festival, so I went back to look at it to maybe see with fresh eyes where I could’ve gone wrong. I hated that version so I spent January rewriting it to the point my honest girlfriend and her family said it was the best draft they’ve read (I’ll add “so far”). I took February off from writing, because it’s my birthday month and I need the break frankly. My submitted loglines were turned down in the meantime.

I’m not thinking about giving up but going other routes because I’m in a corner. I don’t know anyone in the industry. I’ve never seen an agent’s phone number or bumped into one at a Starbucks. I have no prospects for anything in the industry. I’m still a nobody and for some reason I still want to continue to write and the burning desire still remains. I’m just exhausted and wish I was more interested in accounting in another life.

Edit: I think I may need to clarify. I’m not giving up. I’ve told my girlfriend many times the second I stop writing is the second I’m dead. I’m not doing anything else. 1. My accountant line was a joke and 2. What I mean by “different routes” is finding a way around the Hollywood apparatus to make money doing this, and if I catch traction in Hollywood, that would obviously be great. 3. This is just me bitching about me being burnt out to some capacity, and I think many of us have had these thoughts.

My biggest mistake in posting this was forgetting I was on the internet. Not only is it the internet, but a corner of the internet full of writers. If you don’t know anything about writers, let me clue you in before I detail what their responses were. Writers are a group of people that paradoxically suffer from dangerous levels of narcissism, colliding with crippling levels of imposter syndrome, of which they have too much narcissism to admit. They would drive over their own mother and frame your mother for the murder if that meant Hollywood would give them a development deal. Now you understand my mistake by posting this, and your lack of surprise when I tell you the responses boiled down to “writing is ingrained in you and if you don’t have it then quit”.

These people are apparently good writers but they are terrible readers, because they overlooked the part of my post where I explicitly said that I don’t plan on quitting (scroll up yourself if you didn’t notice). They are also terrible liars. You are not pre-determined in some sort of Calvinist divine decree to be a writer, and therefore every single person who has any interest involving themselves in a creative endeavor has considered quitting. I’ve thought about it many times. I’ve been tempted many times. I’ve almost done it many times. It’s not about the frequency the desire to quit or actually quit happens. It’s about what happens if you pull the trigger.

One of my best friends from my hometown is a musician. He is an absolute genius. Mainly an unrelenting hurricane behind the drums, but he’s one of those guys who can pick up any instrument and create a metal masterpiece. He and I are one of the few in our circle of friends that are pursuing a career in the arts, so we bond a lot about our creative peaks and valleys when we frequently text. He told me once that he’s wanted to quit before, and sometimes even actively attempted to quit. What he said next perfectly encapsulates what it’s like in the mind of an artist. He said, “I often find myself quitting for ten minutes, then I’m up all night mixing my songs”.

I tried to quit photography and videos before. I got way too frustrated with my lack of resources and ability at graphic design, which is the way of the new world. If I had known that photoshop has taken over what photography as an art is, I wouldn’t have done it. I like telling stories with my visual work more than the flashy ‘content’. Yet I can’t quit. My obsession is too much to allow me to quit. Sometimes it feels like a prison.

I’m lucky enough to have not fallen prey to pills, powders, and pharmaceuticals, but I understand the inability to quit. When a musician, writer, or painter decides to quit, the withdrawals from the addiction ropes you right back to your canvas despite their best efforts. As ridiculous as it sounds, it is an addiction. Consumption is inevitable. Going harder and improving is inescapable. The obsession is undeniable, and avoidance is unsustainable. The fire burns, but it is purifying and hopefully leads to growth of life.