lutulent pondering

"Life's real failure is when you do not realize how close you were to success when you gave up..." -Unknown

I've been captivated in thought the past few months about dreams, passions, career ideas, family trials and struggles, seemingly inevitable singleness, and plethora of other issues. My mind has been Prefontaining it up nonstop to develop a scheme or a blueprint for the next few years. I've been challenged by quite a few people in the last months to pursue what I love to do. However, the burden is I'm having a strong desire towards so many things that I'm really fighting the ability to simply 'pick-one'.

Then it hit me, yesterday as I was riding along with Deputy Davis of the Santa Clarita Sheriff's Department, (yes, I went on a ride-along) that just picking one thing to do for the rest of your life isn't necessarily the way it has to be. We spoke about how I've been poking my head into multiple careers and just attempting to uncover one that fits me; he told me it may be more of a conglomeration than a singular path. It made sense, the things I love will rarely be diametrically-opposed to the 'other' things I love. Especially when considering how I want to spend the next 40 years of my life, perhaps its important to consider how the ambitions I have can work in unison, not in competition.

I love to write. Believe it or not. I actually don't have to force myself to show up to Starbucks everyday for a couple hours just pounding on the keys to scribe out blogs, skits, scripts, stories, etc. It brings me immense joy and significant contentment; I don't get bored, or lose interest. I love the camaraderie of the coffee shops frequenters; the idea of realizing that you're not the only one plugging it away, day in, day out, just striving to believe in the potential for something greater. However, it can also be an 'elephant-graveyard' of 40 year old nobodies who have been working as background actors since 18, and still drive a 1990 Ford Fiesta with a missing hood.

The industry in Los Angeles California is so broad and so closed it can be mightily deceiving. By industry, I'm merely referencing the film industry. It's definitely more of a "who ya know" and less of a "what you know." So, for people who don't make any connections and enjoy living in their mother's basement playing World of Warcraft, eating cheese-balls, and occasionally dying in a zombie movie as an uncredited-actor your career is pretty much going to be worthless. However, if you're a mover and a shaker and really enjoy making connections and networking than it's an open door. I am hoping that with the right amount of work and a decent amount of luck that I can see some prosperity unfold; not simply financial, but overall as I develop more into the person I was created to be.

I look at friends who I graduated college with and so many of them are 4 deep (four-kids) and married, working as an associate pastor (church) or a door-greeter (Wal-Mart). They seem content. I don't see them blowing up facebook with regret. I don't notice them bitchin' and moanin' (as my father would say) about how tough life is or how they feel shortchanged. However, I do wonder often how many of my friends chose the norm for security sake; took the sure thing, did it just because everyone else was doing it. I'm not saying they took the easy way out whatsoever; their is nothing easy about grinding it out day after day with the responsibility of a family resting on your shoulders. What I'm saying is that I wonder how many people actually chase after the internal-ambitions that drive them? How many of us are settling with normalcy and compromising greatness for comfortability (not a real word, FYI)?

Maybe I'm the town drunk, metaphorically speaking, perhaps I'm the one who thinks he's got it all figured out? I've always thought about how I meet far-above-average people doing normal day-to-day mundane and menial jobs and feel so bad for them; I realize somewhere along the way they just got the shovel out, dug a hole, and got in. However, maybe that shovel was used to beat the dreams out more than to dig a hole? Or both? I don't know. I have no problem with a blue-collar approach to life; it has been my family's approach from generation-to-generation. I can roll up my sleeves and get my hands dirty, but it's not always about the grit; sometimes its about the wit.

"Work smart...not hard..." I'm not saying don't work hard, I'm simply saying that doing it smartly will save you a lot of heartache in the end. I am not completely sure what drove me to write this blog, I'm not saying anything new in it. I guess my intentions were to make it more than obvious that we need not compromise because society has shown us patterns of normality that lead to a steady paycheck; we can live on that balance between certainty-and-the-lack-thereof. It isn't going to make you rich; it'll probably leave you broker than broke for a while. However, I think the end product is greater because your then molded into a greater you, not just another fallen soldier of meaning.

"Success builds character, failure reveals it..."
-Dave Checkett