your friendly film person :)

I went on a trip to Rome recently. A full week of nothing but food, great coffee and quality time with the person I love. When we booked the trip months in advance, I was incredibly hesitant because I was looking for a job at the time. “What if I have to work on those days? What if there’s a production happening and I can’t get hired because I have the first week of November blocked off?” I kept reiterating, stressed. I was miserable.

A few weeks later, I book a gig that is presented to me as ‘the most stable TV job you’ll ever come across’. The salary was great, the script really fun, the cast immaculate. A new form of anxiety reared its head: performance anxiety. “What if I suck and get fired? What if I don’t know the script well enough?” This began a feverish summer of nervous reading, annotating, preparing. I was ecstatic to get back to work. My wish was granted, nothing else in the world mattered. It was miserable.

The project begins and something feels off. I leave the first day confused but excited. I’m thinking it’s probably in my head, I tell my loved ones and they say the same. My sleep is weird, my dreams even weirder. Nightmares of mistakes past, of castles crumbling, of standing still and never moving. It didn’t matter, I was just happy to be there. To try to coexist, to try to fit in again. Try hard I did, you better believe it showed. I fell on my face the first week in. “Are you okay?” I kept being asked. No, I was miserable.

However, it seems I was the least of anyone’s problems. A month passes, the project goes on a hiatus under the pretense of ‘finishing the majority of the set dressing’. A couple weeks later, with one swift phone call, I was unemployed again. No severance pay, no ‘maybe we can absorb you somewhere’, not for me and not for any of the crew. Looking at the bills and thinking about the trip that’s happening in a couple weeks drowned me in sorrow. My instinct about something feeling “off” was right. The salary never made it to my account, I was broke again. I was miserable.

I packed my tote bag, a small suitcase and met up with my love in Rome. Nothing else in the world mattered, except maybe the morning cappuccino. Coffee in Italy will make you look differently at your regular cup of Joe back home. They don’t do decaf in Rome, which was a bit difficult for me because my body can only handle a certain amount of caffeine a day. It didn’t matter. We walked so much of the city and still only managed to see less than one third of it. I sent my parents so many photos, my mom remarked: “You needed this trip.”

I really did. It was the greatest gift. I was dreaming big, like I could have everything I ever wanted. I was my happiest I had been in months.

Eventually, we returned home. Back to reality. Not even a day in, I puked out any food we had put in our bodies after landing. Both myself and my love contracted some form of a virus, it tortured us in shifts for a week. These past 24 hours have been the closest I’ve come to “healthy” and coupled with my continued unemployment it’s made me feel….. weird. Friends and family keep telling me it’s good things turned out this way, in retrospect it seems so. Even today, such a sunny day, I can’t really feel all that good. I breathe in the fresh air, look at the bright blue sky and breathe out. I’m still miserable.

Reality is so miserable. You can have time but you can’t have money, your money eats away your hours and your days, until you grow old and must sit still. It’s hard to remember work is not purpose. Work is a necessary evil that you hopefully find ways to enjoy. Purpose is a deep desire to be something, go somewhere, do something. Is it really fair to expect anyone, let alone yourself, to figure it out perfectly? Sometimes we have neither, some will always have both, but even if only surviving is in the cards is purpose really what we need to fulfill our life?

When I was drinking my morning cappuccino in Rome, there was no thought of purpose. When I am in a tight, loving hug, there is no thought of work. When I take a break from staring at the black & white page I type out, the colors around me look brighter. Still, my first thought isn’t “this is my purpose”. It’s “I love this”. There is such joy in just loving. People, places, moments, even things. It’s simple. It’s easy. Nothing else is ever easy.

Work gets easier when you’ve got something, someone, somewhere you want to show your love to. Hopefully that someone is you first, or that something is a hobby you want to practice, or that somewhere is your home or a dreamy trip. Maybe the next month it’s a friend’s birthday, an anniversary, or you’re just grateful and that love centers around those closest to you. At its core, your love should first be enough for you. Or else you’ll be forever miserable. Or else work becomes purpose, purpose becomes money, your time dwindles and you stand still.

Or maybe just take a break when it’s presented to you and don’t feel guilty about it. That’s probably a good start.