Avoidance
I have been doing everything I can to avoid sitting down and writing this.
I think it is because I know I need to do the work on paper, in my head, in my life, that I have been hinting at and inching towards for a while now.
I need to call it all out and make a plan.
One of the things that got me to sit down to start to write this is realizing that I didn’t need to outline and detail the whole plan tonight. I could start the work and pick it up later. And I think this is one of the problems. I get these ideas that I need to address something, fix something, and the big picture comes to me and I see myself in my minds eye squaring my shoulders and taking the new approach and attacking the issue, problem, cause, new creative idea, full on with all the power in my universe, making it bend to my (good) will and get made, fixed, righted, realized, almost instantaneously.
As I write/right this I realize how insane this is. Not only does it place ridiculous expectations on myself, but it actually buys into some ideas about the lone (fill in the blank) being able to clearly see the problem, quickly categorize it, attack it head on and be redeemed quickly by the success of the outcome. I don’t teach or preach this, why do I expect this from myself? Life works this way sometimes, but not usually. This kind of single minded righteousness is seen in Hollywood films and told in Horatio Alger’s stories, but is not what most of us experience. Our lives are these unpredictable paths, and while most of us try to make sensible plans to navigate the unknown, unlike the determinism of Alger’s characters, or great intuition combined with blind luck of the hero of the Hollywood tale, we really don’t know what’s coming or how to handle what’s coming.
This is a convoluted way of coming to understanding that I need to go back to the building blocks of making a path, I see it as a series of pavers that line up, representing the major areas of my life, that need to be looked at, evaluated individually, and then in comparison to one another; and then a plan will be devised and set in to motion. Knowing all the time that I can not attach to any particular plan because the big earthquake may hit tomorrow, or I may get sick, or someone I love may get sick, or I may get that phone call that green lights production on Saltwater, or I may get a job offer I can’t refuse. We just don’t know. But I for one need to have the lay of the land of my life, hence I need to have a plan.
A plan that may turn into a paper airplane and fly out a window as soon as it’s done.
So with no more waffling or theorizing about my plan, here’s a start. I know I need to identify all of the main areas of my life and evaluate what’s going on there. I have done this in my head, and verbally in casual bitch sessions to friends and loved ones, (lucky them).
Now it’s time to put it on paper. Here we go:
Professional
Creative
Financial
Social
Personal
Physical
Domestic/home
I think these are all the main areas of discomfort, a word I found in a lengthy conversation with my guy in Canada earlier this evening. And guess which category he ends up in? Yep, we talked about it, he knows about this.
So now that I have named all the areas that I need to consider I can say that across the board all of them are imbalanced. So my next task is to drill down into each of these areas and identify what is going on, what is working and not working, what needs to be brought to the forefront, and what needs to be eliminated or de-prioritized.
I already know a lot of what goes under each subheading, but one step at a time. Right?
And back to the good old what I did today stuff. I spent most of my day at City College and I am about to post my photo blog/ilog that gives a glimpse into that world. While I was taking pictures of the shadows on Monday on a break from teaching I thought of all the beautiful faces in the Final Cut Pro class that I am teaching and knew that I wanted to do a photo journal of those face, cause they say it all. Based on this inspiration I started to snap images today, so welcome to a sneak peek of some of what I will be doing in the coming weeks.
These images were taken while my class was high jacked by another instructor from the department to act in a little promotional film he is shooting from the department.
I love these guys.
