assertive, ascertain, a certain ummm...

We are now five inches away from the crossroads of my transition from student to graduate. If you would really like to know I'm looking for work as a researcher. A lot of films, be they fiction or non, require researchers. Just to know things. When you make a film you've got to know things and I like to be the person who's searching for that knowledge. I dress the part, you know it: unwieldy sweaters, vintage and/or chunky shoes, and I push my glasses up by the bridge which will forever drive my mom batty.

So I'm dressed for success, I have a good resume to start with...

The world suddenly seems very large and I am very fish-like in a floundering kind of way. Does anyone else feel like they've been pushed onto a big city street that's full of the hustle and bustle of people taking care of themselves? And you're going to have to be extremely assertive to catch anyone's eye?

Hmmm.... 

the city i'm in

I dreamed of looking like this when I was a child.
I don't, by the way.

My attitude towards what I do post-graduation is a combination of shooting for the furthest galaxy and despondency. When an idea pops into my head I say, "Why not?" Except that in my current outlook it sounds more like "Why not."

I'm applying for a job at the Sundance Film Festival.
The National Film Board of Canada's job listings page is now in my folder of websites I check just about everyday.
I'm planning on spending a couple of months in Hawaii.
A week to a month in Seattle. Or move there entirely. I want a big city.
Study Spanish and live in Spain for a month. Imagine Spain in May.
Work with troubled youth in Australia.

I really am seriously considering all of these things.

Because what do people like me do in my position? People who are passionate about and fascinated by everything but are dipping into morose-osity because they lack direction. People like me move to Israel and work on a kibbutz (something I've thought about doing since I was 19). I research my future by checking one-way ticket prices to places all over the globe. Right now my future is affordable because it's months away and I have no deadlines. I am completely and utterly flexible.

I don't promise I'll do all these things. In a way, I hope I don't. Not like this. I will see the world, but I'd hate to be a wanderer trying to find their way out of morose-osity. The way life comes to me I can never find my future. It's not until the present is ending that I suddenly find my new purpose. I dream up plans and purposes because why should I sit around for something to be handed to me on a plate, but it's like throwing weak magnets at a fridge and watching them slide slowly down.


I know it will work out.


But.

This time it's a big deal.
This time it's more stressful.
I'd like to have a purpose.

Did you know this is who I am inside?

there wasn't ever anything else in this world for me but this

Today as we sat on our back row in Film History class (the class where I get to draw evil bunnies on my tests) the lights dimmed and we watched Jaws. Imagine my joy at finally seeing this 1975 landmark film.

At one point a newscaster stands on the beach of Amity and says, "but a dark cloud has come over this island. A cloud in the shape of a killer shark." 


End this as a night where a classmate and I lay on the floor of an aisle in the uni. library reading about sci-fi movie scores.

Sometimes I bask in the light from the projection booth and think of how magical cinema is. Oh what great art we have! We work and it's uncomfortable and long and ambitious and tedious and it's magic. We've captured something, told a story. Images of life and imagination and dream. Soundscapes create worlds outside the camera frame. Cinema is alive, it's interactive.

The moving image!
Watching the world through a viewfinder!
Exploring everything for the rest of my life!
Reaching people through storytelling!
Giving voice to the voiceless!
Expressing the importance of our quotidian!


I am in love.

yoga tells me to breathe but I quit that

Quit yoga or breathing?

Quickly, fast, get ready for it! Before I go to bed tonight I have to figure out what I'm doing and write a treatment (pitch) for MY documentary and send it off to the FACULTY REVIEWERS (You know the documentary that I need to figure out and plan the next year of my life around and then convince people next week that they should give me $1500 and I'm only kind of sure of what I'm doing right at this moment), plan everyone's wardrobe for Friday and Saturday for that fiction film, wrangle up camera and sound equipment to do an interview tomorrow, cram for the test of the class that I'm terribly bad at and magically become a genius again, set up an interview for Saturday for the one of four documentaries I'm currently working on, go running and do yoga. So now you see which one I quit doing. I quit breathing. Who has time for it?

Does anyone else feel really exhilarated right now?

addendum:
My professor's advice to me today (which will actually mean something if you've ever had to take documentary history) was "Helluva good time; no whales." So I keep repeating to myself as I sit here, "Helluva good time; no whales. Helluva good time; no whales. Helluva good time..."
Another professor saw me this afternoon and asked me what I was doing then asked, "Is it crazy and different?" I thought about it for a minute, "Yes, yes it is..." and he replied, "Because we like that kind of stuff."

Helluva good time.
No whales.


Yeah.

dear united nations

So I might've been upset for a minute that I will no longer have any classes from my two favorite film professors. But it might be even cooler that I am going to work with them as soon as I'm done with this documentary.

AHHHHHHH!!!!!!

I knew this would be the coolest year ever.