Leap!

It's Leap Day, Year of the Water Dragon! I like mixing my East/West calendars, so what?

It's been awhile since my last update. Nothing earth-shattering has gone on here, but I did attend an R.I.T. alumni event last Friday evening that proved to be fun, surreal, and fruitful. I reconnected with people with whom I went to film school, including someone who might be in a position to get me some work at some point down the line, and one of my very first screenwriting students. Now THAT was trippy. I knew he looked familiar to me, and I barely had a chance to talk to him at the end of the evening. He reminded me that he had been a student of mine. I had to ask for his name, and as soon as I heard it, I felt suddenly like I was in a time vortex, spinning around on my axis. I think we call that "full circle."

I used to kick myself and bemoan my time at R.I.T. because it wasn't this or it wasn't that, and I did go into a soul-crushing amount of debt to get that MFA. I guess over the years that degree has felt fairly worthless at times, which of course it really isn't, because it enabled me to teach at the university level and got me in doors I wouldn't have otherwise. And not for nothing, but I worked hard for that degree, and no one can take that away from me. But after talking with my former classmates the other night, I realized how much I really did learn there, about independent filmmaking, community, and collaboration. Meeting those people again, talking to the head of the school (which was a department in my day), and seeing one of my very first students again helped me to sort of close the chapter of feeling bad about my experiences there. I did have some great personal challenges while I was at R.I.T., but again, all that has helped to make me the person I am today. And so, I've reclaimed those 3 years of my life as having great value, instead of regretting certain things or denouncing certain things. I believe this brings me one step closer to integration.

By that I mean, integrating all aspects of my life, my past, who I was at various points in my life. I now recognize the temptation in middle age (yipes, did I just say that?) to see one's younger years as "wasted" or "misguided" when in fact, living through ones 20s and 30s is really all about making mistakes and figuring things out. By the time you hit 40, you'll be lucky to have some of it figured out, and the work doesn't stop there. I don't know anyone in my age range who hasn't spent time pondering the "what ifs" of the younger decades. The horrible truth is that our culture puts so much emphasis on life from 23 - 39 that you'd think there's nothing after wards worth living for or celebrating (ahhhh "Logan's Run" anyone? Factoid: in the book, the age for going on Carousel was 20, not 30 as it was in the 1976 film). Maybe that's starting to change, slowly, but I see all around me that folks in my generation are having a hard time letting go of their 30s, or having difficulty moving into their mid-40s with grace.

Renew! Renew!

I recently heard an interview with Tori Amos, who I have adored and looked up to as a creative muse since my film school days, and her advice to the interviewer in relation to growing older was "Step into your grace." I think that is marvelous advice, and probably means different things to different people. To me, it's about not bemoaning or second guessing where you've been or what you've done. It's about carrying all that experience with you to be more than you were before, and to embrace the next stage of life with joy, openness, and fearlessness. To leap into the next adventure with all your faculties, experiences, feelings, mistakes, thoughts and friends of previous years to rely on.

So, as I approach my 44th birthday, here's to stepping into my grace, and then leaping forward.