Dear Claire,
Since my birthday falls a day before new years I kind of take the new years resolution thing pretty seriously. It’s an “okay, year older, just what do we want to accomplish and experience in the year ahead?” right when I turn a new age for that year. This year we’re hitting the big 3-5 mark. And when you put it that way I guess you could say I am 2 games under .500 in the big scheme of things. And this years resolution is similar to the others over the years, it includes some ambition for sure, but I hoping it’s different in the sense that it lays the foundation to a career change and a return to an honest to god enjoyment of life.
Let me set the scene here: at 35 years of age I have been in the post-education professional “working” stage of my life for 10 years now. I’ve had some ups and downs, I worked in a coffee shop, I’ve built a multi-media business, made a indie feature film, got married, and a had a baby. I got a whack of things done you could say. But as the photo above, taken moments ago shows, I work from home, the home my wife and her father bought for us (since I had no savings to speak of), in our kitchen, my office. It could be said, that after 10 years of doing some different things in life, I’ve wound right back where I started, or set off, in post-university days: to dig in, get serious, and embark on a professional feature filmmaking career, which has been my dream of dreams. I know, right now I may come across as a Tony Robbin’s bookset candidate or future “The Secret” symposium participant, and that scares me as much as you.
I was noting in my journal entry on my birthday, something that has become a tradition ... wait, is it sad that I can find myself alone at the evening of my birthday in order to make a journal entry since my early teen years? Anyway, this year I was noting that I basically don’t have career to speak of, I’m not exactly employable by anyone, and I’ve basically set myself up for tremendous achievement as a lone wolf or utter failure. Here’s an example, Duane and I were walking down Bloor St the other day noting that a friend of ours was getting a job as a reader for a feature film production company. Duane thought, “you’d be great at that kind of job, you really know story structure.” To which I replied, “yeah, but when I read a script I read it as though I’m making it, it becomes my passion or it falls away as who gives a shit. I wouldn’t be reading for the sake of the production company I’d be reading as a filmmaker. So, if they didn’t make the ones I chose, I’d jump ship, contact the writer myself and tell them we gotta set to work on this ourselves, raise the money and make the fucking thing.” Do you see what I’m saying? At 35 years of age you know yourself, you do, you’ve been around your for long enough to have a proven track record. And my track record is entrepreneurial - another way of saying unemployable as staff but if I get the right project vision together maybe worth investing in. Maybe another way of saying I’m either unable to control my opinions, my passions, or I got something in me more interested in saying something than just working at something. The final way of saying this is that I’m a broke-ass artist. Awesome! In some way you can say I’ve arrived to the dance at last!
I’d like to go back about 15 years. I was sitting on the steps of my friends house back in Ottawa. He wanted to be a writer. He was a creative guy, very funny, and he had a way with words. I told him to go for it. He told me that he wasn’t so sure that he could pull it off, that he could move to Toronto and pursue a dream career as a writer. On the spot I came up with this idea: the five year plan. I told him in five years you can achieve any goal you set for yourself. This may sound nuts, but I believe it - within reason. If I said today that I wanted to be a professional boxer, safe to say I’m going to fail at this 5 year plan: I’ve never boxed, I’m in no way on a path in life as a boxer, and I’m not a consistent workout kind of guy (and I weight 150 pounds socking wet). BUT, if I said in 5 years that I want to enter my first amateur bout at some small little boxing club community tournament, I think I could do this. See what I’m saying? You gotta be reasonable, consider where you are right at this moment and then what you’re talking about achieving. You want to be president of the USA? Okay, you better be a senator or somehow involved in politics first. But if you’re starting from scratch and have a proclivity towards social service (or a greedy oilman) and you say, in 5 years I want to be involved seriously in a political career I think you can pull it off. I think you get what I mean.
Anyway, back to my friend on his parent’s porch. I told my friend to just write, get out there, send things out, and just set a goal in 5 years to have a few things published and your first novel in hand to start banging on doors, in 5 years he’d be a “writer”, he’d have done it. He left feeling invigorated, so did I. I wondered where I came up with this five year plan thing and did I really believe it. I did. I do. My friend’s tale ends sadly, see he went back inside, his mother was listening to us talking outside and as soon as he came in she told him, “That kind of life is okay for him, but not for you. You just get a job, that’s the kind of people we are.” And he did. In a way I can’t blame her, I’m as convinced the other way with my kid. If baby Claire grew up to say “I want to get an office job” I’d tell her, “that’s not what we do.” And I still think if my friend set himself up for a 5 year writing plan he would’ve achieved it, but that’s just me.
Now I told my friend this advice about 15 years ago, the next question is have I EVER followed it myself? No. That’s how fucking pathetic I am. For 10 years I feel like I’ve been either on vacation (under employment), purgatory (website design from home), or running around doing a million things because it happened to fall on my desk that day. I’ve been a man of no plan. I’ve been roaming the mountain ranges, mostly down in the valley’s, never truly ascending a peak, never a focus to chose one, to focus an ascent on one. (The mountain analogy because I’m a Capricorn, the mountain goat. One book said we’re great at achieving goals, only we can sometimes spend years searching for the right one to climb, only ever getting halfway to the top to stop, pack up, and try a different one.) Duane, a great man for boiling things down, put it this way: “Shane, if you ever focused, look out.”
Alright, in 5 years I’m going to be 40. Put that number in your mouth one time and try not to laugh. 40. Come on, are you serious? Well, it’s true. At 40 do I really want to be still kind of floating between 20 different careers, making a little money here and there, and more or less drifting on the outside of the dream. It’s as though I’m on my little dingy, I can see the shore, the town I want to be in, but I just can’t bring the ship in to port, I bounce around caught in different currents, sometimes getting close, sometimes drifting further out, but never able to get the goddamn thing into port. What is this port? To me I’d say California, but that might be because I’m nuts. But for sure the port is me doing one thing finally: enjoying my life again. (that’s hard to write)
That in a nutshell is my 5 year plan. When I set off on this dream 20 years old from Ottawa for Toronto for attend York U film school, dreaming a life in feature film making and TV as a writer and director and creator, I left excited about life, full of life, and from a place where I truly enjoyed life. I had ambition, sure, I had the constant aching sadness that is part of being alive, but I can honestly say that I enjoyed life, I enjoyed my life, I enjoyed the promise of it. Lately? Well, I’ve been rather frustrated trying to bring the boat into port, like I’ve been paddling against the stream ridiculously, selfishly, and certainly too seriously. I’ve lost my way in many ways.
So, more specifically, what is the 5 year plan? Okay, right off, and this is sad to admit, but the other day I bent over to pick something up and my legs were kind of stiff. I looked ridiculous trying to pick this thing off the ground, I had to old-man-bend-over, more back than legs. So, time to exercise, drink more water, and be healthy, because in 5 years when Claire is 5 years old, I want to be able to play with her, run around some, and I don’t think this is a lot to ask of one’s self. The other major thing is to be in port finally, to be working as a professional in the feature film world, as a writer, director, and creator. One, because I have no other job prospects, and two, because I wont be able to accept anything else.
So, what do I have to do? I have to get into a schedule. I have to stick with it. What I’ve done is assigned myself a job. Yep, I got a job folks. I am a full-time employee of The Breath films. Job doesn’t pay ... yet. The job is to write feature films and try to get one of them off the ground either through script sale or self-production. That’s about all we got on the immediate horizon. I work 10 to 7 every day, right here in the kitchen. I got it all blocked out for the monday to friday job, weekends like other families, doing family things like fixing the faucet or taking hikes. But monday to friday I got a job. Today is the first day on the job. I was 40 minutes late, but I got in and at it. I even dressed up, as the photo above attests. I’m not going to frantically paddle into port, I’m going to do it determined, focused, evenly, and dedicatedly, and I’m not loosing focus this time around because if I do and in another 10 years at 45 and I haven’t done anything about anything, writing a blog about fulfilling promise, dreams, is, um, maybe even kind of sad, at least to me. You still dream, sure, set goals, of course, but you’re in port, you’re in town, you’re making your way in this town, you’ve arrived and have planted your feet firmly in the community ... you’re living it finally.
I think then, if I can get this together, I’ll be what I always wanted: a good guy doing good work enjoying life, even through all its hardships. Not like a maniac as I have been. Took me 10 years to admit that I am an artist and will have an artists life, hopefully it’ll only take me five more to be on my way with it, firmly planted, doing it.
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