your friendly film person :)

I’d like to start with a small note:

I don’t know what happened during my brief hiatus but the site surpassed over 1.000 views! That’s a fairly big deal to me, especially since I don’t really promote my content much and it seems that there are people checking in frequently regardless of that fact. With enough creative energy and willing collaborators there will be more audiovisual work on here soon, as well as more writing of course.

Thank you for keeping up, I am humbled and deeply appreciative of your time and attention (and kind DMs)!

— N

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Right when you become accustomed to the idea that it’s time to switch gears, give up on a dream you were too afraid to chase to begin with, run away and start over… the phone will ring. An opportunity will present itself like it was waiting to trick you all this time like “HAH! Gotcha!”

That’s what life is, I guess. Right when you’re sure it will zig, it zags. What’s weird is while it won’t make sense as it’s happening, eventually it all adds up. Someday you look back on everything and think “huh, maybe it wasn’t dumb luck” as you sit by yourself, staring out at nothing in particular. Those moments that felt terminal, mistakes you thought you’d never recover from, pain that cut you so deep you were convinced it was going to make or break you — they hit different a few years down the line.

So, the phone rang. A job I thought I would never come close to doing again is right around the corner (if all goes well and a deal is made). After the call, I sat there a while. My first reaction wasn’t glee or excitement, but a few seconds of relief that were closely followed by a sense of urgency. It all started coming back to me: the preparations, the failsafes for all the things that could possibly go wrong, prior failures, moments of victory, highly-praised accomplishments. A rollercoaster of emotions and thoughts compressed into 5 earthly minutes, during which I called 4 other coworkers (3 previous collaborators, 1 new) to calmly discuss the next moves.

It’s similar to the bike-riding analogy we’ve all heard a million times. The brain instinctively knows what to do, how to prepare and what questions to ask. Whether you’ve been away for a week, a few months or a year, I’ve found preparing for a new gig is like muscle memory. All experiences — good, bad, amazing, traumatic — resurface. Though as time goes by it seems to me they all become easier to make useful. Yet some fears remain as it’s not up to us to “change it all”.

My fear is missing out on precious moments.

I don’t want to be the person that always puts work first no matter what and becomes a likable stranger. I don’t want to be the one that always pulls out of everything because I need to work. Worst of all is the thought that I could miss the chance to say goodbye to a dying loved one. There was a time I got close to that, twice if we count an almost-incident. It’s so strange that we’re so quick to absorb young people into jobs designed to leave no room for living, yet we wonder why they’re “not ambitious”.

“This job requires more than the bare minimum, you need to really love it.”

“How can you be tired? If you’re tired, what are people like me supposed to be?”

“It’s clear that young people these days don’t know what it means to work hard…”

It’s sad, really. We’re so quick to dismiss young people as naive when all they’re demonstrating is a basic understanding of the importance of work-life balance. After watching their parents stretch themselves thin for a paycheck to then neglect their own mental and physical health, children got smarter. They learned that there is, in fact, a line in the sand that needs to be drawn or else they’re next. We question why women don’t want to raise children anymore while making it near impossible for any living person to survive on one household income.

It’s easy to “love a job” when you’ve got no love once the job is over. Once you’ve loved, becoming a cog in any metaphorical machine is painful.

Yet I picked up the phone, I set the meeting, and anxiously await to go back to working nonstop. The first-day rush, the new experiences, the days that feel like they’re never enough hours long, a whole new world of memories and stress that eventually becomes too much. A familiar cycle starts again with its own surprise twists. Maybe this can serve as a reminder that unhealthy attachments are not just for human relationships, and while I know my fate I can say with much certainty: I couldn’t be happier.