On Finding Your Passion

I lived in Anchorage, Alaska until I was twenty-two.

I was born there. I grew up there. My family lives there. My friends were there. I was never happy in Alaska, but because it’s such a remote, far-off place it never really occurred to me that I could do anything else. So I worked shitty jobs, lived in the same house I grew up in, took up space, and got drunk with my friends a lot.

That’s pretty much all there is to do up there. Alaska isn’t a particularly creative place, or a place with, let’s say, opportunities to explore that creativity. It’s very much the place where you get your Job, marry your Girlfriend, have your Kids, buy your House, and Die. If you want to be in the arts, it’s the place for spinning your wheels.

Pictured: me, no longer able to spin my wheels

I never wanted any of that. I wanted to write. To travel. To explore the world and see new things. It just never occurred to me that I could do that.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved to write. When I was a kid my mom unburied an old typewriter in the garage and let me play around with it. I wrote a story on it she later called “disturbing.” But for some reason, writing was always something I was ashamed of. I used to hide Writer’s Digest magazines under my mattress like old Playboys (we had the Internet for porn by then). It was absolutely not something I was comfortable discussing. Even my best friend didn’t know about it until after we’d graduated high school. And there’s a long list of reasons for that I won’t go in to on this random blog, because mostly I want to talk about how important it is to find your passion.

Unrelated garbage

Everyone has interests. Hobbies. Passions. Those things are important. They’re what keep us going. Some people find that passion through work. Some find it through art. The luckiest among us manage to combine both. But no matter what keeps you going, no matter what it is that gets you out of bed, it’s important to find that thing and to hold on to it, to nurture it and let it grow. A lot of people don’t have that chance. Many of them will find it, and that’s great! There’s no age limit to finding something you’re passionate about. There’s no such thing as “too old.” Your life is your life. We only get the one, so I think it’s important to make the most of it. In my last blog post I talked about burnout, and how so many people (especially in this shitty garbage country we call home because we can’t escape) live only for their next shift, bouncing from job to job and calling it a day. Some people are truly happy in such a life, and there’s nothing wrong with that at all. But mostly people do it because they don’t have a choice. Because rent is due, because we still get parking tickets even though no one’s supposed to go outside (unless you want to go to the mall of course, because those are important), because we have cats to feed and bills to pay.

I don’t remember exactly when I realized I wanted to make movies. I think it was something I’d known subconsciously for a long time. I was obsessed with The Lord of the Rings. I watched the movies weekly, I read the books over and over again. I pored through the extended edition special features. I remember watching a featurette that talked about the cast and crew. They all seemed so happy. Everyone on that set knew they were part of something special, and while they never talked about it, they also knew that they’d never get to do it again. That once it was over, it was over. And I remember watching that and just thinking, “Wow, that seems nice. I’d like some of that!”

But it still didn’t occur to my stupid ass that I wanted to make movies. So I wrote in my vacuum, never sharing with anyone. I got a job at a dry cleaners, at a print shop, at a Netflix distribution center (which I would not have abandoned the way I did if I’d had any inclination of where they or I would end up, goddamn). I drank and made a fool of myself.

Then one day I was looking up film schools. Because Alaska was so far off and remote, no one ever thought that was something people did. People got jobs at the airport, or the bank. People got nursing degrees. They didn’t direct movies. That’s a myth.

The Internet told me all the best film schools were in Los Angeles or New York, but that was already pretty obvious. I had no ties to either city; I’d never even visited either. But Alaskan weather sucks, so I decided to move to LA.

One of the first pictures I took in Los Angeles

I don’t think I told anyone about that decision for at least six months. It was a “someday” goal. One of these days I’ll move to LA. One of these days I’ll start my life.

When it happened, it happened fast. I went down to visit for a few days with my mom and stepdad. They helped me find an apartment. The building manager actually promised to hold an empty unit for me until August. Now that I’ve lived here for as long as I have, I can recognize how absolutely insane that is.

Pictured: my first film poster, being real dramatic

My friends in Alaska were incredible. They have always been supportive of me and my weird little endeavors, but I don’t think most of them expected me to go through with it. That month and a half between when I found my apartment and when I finally moved was bittersweet. We still keep in touch, but not as much as before. People move on and people drift apart, and that’s okay. That’s life.

I hit the ground running when I came to LA. I was taking classes at Los Angeles City College. My stupid ass had thought LA being a big city would mean it had decent public transit. I was wrong, and I went without a car for years. Somehow. A lot of my classes were frustrating, vague, taught by professors who clearly hadn’t been involved in the actual industry since the 80s (my directing teacher was proud that he hadn’t changed his lesson plan since 1986. 1986!) But there were good classes, too. Jen Vaughn, Dylan Shields, and Christopher Rossiter made it worth showing up. Those three are still around, and Jen Vaughn runs the program these days, and the school is so much better for it.

But I made some amazing new friends, and together we started making movies on our off time. Little scenes, little sketches, short films. We didn’t know what the hell we were doing, but we were figuring it out together, and that was the best.

Pictured: friendship

Now I look back on some of those early days, and all of those early projects, and cringe. I’ve come a long way since then, both personally and professionally. But I’ve never had so much fun in my life. Being on set is my passion. Making movies, telling stories. I’ve directed a lot over the years, but I still smile when I see actual human beings acting out lines that I wrote. There’s nothing as special as seeing something you’ve written down on a page come to life. I steadfastly refuse to ever have a child, because this is seriously so much better, oh my god.

Twenty-two is young, but at the same time, twenty-two years is a lot of years to spin your wheels. For me it was an eternity. But no matter how old you are, or what your interests are, don’t give up. If you haven’t found your passion yet, that’s okay. What matters is that you go out and you try new things. If it doesn’t work out, or you lose your interest in it, or it leads somewhere else, that’s all okay! Don’t think of it as wasting time. As long as you’re doing something, you’re not wasting time. You’re finding yourself, and discovering what gives your life its meaning.

Since we only get the one, that seems pretty important to me.

Pictured: important people, important chicken