I work a lot. I have a day job, to which I apply at least 50 hours a week, a short film in the last stages of editing, writing here, and a smattering of freelance writing gigs. Seven months ago I wasn't doing any of it (save the day job). When I'm single I fixate on work. My brain wanders with haphazard ambition and I'm not capable of telling myself I shouldn't bother trying something because I won't be able to pull it off. I like trying. In some ways it's torturous sitting up till 3 or 4 in the morning on a random Wednesday night returning emails, creating shot lists, making line-item budgets from scratch, or dottering over a rewrite. Some days I have no idea why I'm doing any of it, or who I'm doing it for.
When I was a junior in college I started interning for a film company. A few months later I added a part-time job to avoid having to pull out more student loans. The year before I had been a foppish undergrad, lazily trotting my way through four classes a quarter. Then suddenly I had two jobs and a full course load. There's nothing special about that experience. There are lots of hard working people in the world, more disciplined, productive, and put-upon than I am.
Still I remember that year, walking into the careers office on campus and looking through the internships list to see if there was something there that I was interested in. Since that year I've usually felt entirely uncomfortable if I'm not actively engaged in at least two different jobs at any given time. That was the year I discovered the vague shape that my adult life would wind up taking, at least through my twenties. It was a shape of hours and hours of work, most of it self-motivated and with only the vaguest idea of what I was hoping to get out of all those late hours and jarringly early mornings.
I remember one night I had to stay up to finish coverage on a script, and I made a fresh pot of coffee at 2AM, poured the entire pot into a Big Gulp cup, drank every last drop in twenty minutes, and still managed to pass out dead asleep two hours later when I was finally done. The next day my boss read the coverage report in 3 minutes, put it back in his outbox for me to file, and it was never seen again.
My mom likes to quote me as a child announcing that I was a "get-get-get boy" one Christmas. As a child, my avarice was fierce and unhinged. I lusted after toys, games, tennis shoes, brand name t-shirts, and non-generic cereal with an intensity that was physical. I ached to possess things. There's nothing quite as disappointing as getting what you want, I discovered. Toys always turned out to be cheap plastic assemblies that became tedious after a few minutes. Shoes fell apart. Fruit Loops didn't taste any better than the generic stuff my parents bought in giant plastic sacks at cut-rate prices.
At some point in my adolescence I decided I wanted to start giving instead of taking. I liked letting things go, handing them off to someone else and, in the best case scenario, seeing them become happier for a little bit. When I was trying to break into the film industry I thought my life calling was to share something with the world at large, some effulgent message of raw human experience that I simply couldn't hold inside. Like a man-child of ego and inexperience I thought the world needed me and my creative expressions to help evolve it into something better. In another era I might have started a religion, but in the late 90's I realized the best way to save the world was through filmmaking. (When I was a teenager I thought I could do it by being in a band, and when I was ten I thought being halfback for the Oakland Raiders would accomplish the same goal of world salvation)
The only thing that's ever curbed my work habits has been dating. I actually took a sick day this spring, the first one I've ever taken, just so I could spend the day with a woman. I worked late last Friday and was stuck for more than an hour waiting for the next bus to take me back into the city. I remember some nights earlier this year, waiting in that same spot and feeling my blood pressure rise with each passing minute the bus failed to arrive. I remember my foot anxiously tapping on the grooved rubber floor watching old bums amble their way out the back door. I remember getting off the bus two stops after my normal one and power walking through chilly black nights, then slowing a block before my destination so I wouldn't be sweaty or out of breath when I met the woman I was seeing. Even then I sometimes wouldn't be able to help myself and I'd trot the last half block up hill and around a corner. Last Friday the only thing waiting for me in the city was more work. It could wait.
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