The little things.....

"A mind is a terrible thing to waste." So what do you do when your mind is wasting, your spirits are low and none of the 10 million "little" projects you have going(if even still in your mind) are amounting to nothing?

The universal answer to everything...work.

I often respond to this with well what if that does not work, the answer is still "go work".

Here is why:
Sometimes I will go to a set as an extra and I will have almost no excitement about being on a set. Even when I leave extras holding and am actually on the set still barely a glimmer of the awe and joy I had just a couple of months ago.

Then, it hits me. Where I am, what I am doing, and where I am trying to go. I then begin again to look with wonder through the lens of my imagination.

The set becomes once again a place of endless opportunity and experience. In the last few months I have done things that literally millions of people who "wish I could have" will never do. I am excited again because once again I am reminded that it's not about me, and yet I am the only one who can do what I do.


As I sit here typing this in a coffee shop in a perfect little Chicagoland sub-urb. I am very aware of the the solder in fatigues sitting with his classmates studying for some thing or another. Seeing the solder sitting here is a stark reminder to me that my little world is very very very fragile.

I can sit here and listen to "Coldplay" and whine about how I feel about my current film career. Or maybe I can appreciate every minute that I am not in a ditch thousands of miles from anyone that I have ever known waiting for the next 10 year old with a backpack full of explosives to kill me.

Courage, no matter why it is needed seems to be hard fought. At the end of the day the fight to earn your strength is always worth it. What ever it takes, what every you need to do, as a person to get yourself inspired. To find and re-find your reason-to-create.

Mine, it's all the stories that the people who lived them, can't tell.

It's not just documentaries, sometimes the raw facts just take too long to get out. With the right narrative you can tell 100 stories with just one. Saving Private Ryan did just that when the beaches of Normandy France where once again alive again for the thousands and thousand that where there. For all of the people who's lives where saved because of the Allied advance after that day. For all of the people on both sides who gave everything, and the people they left behind.

That single scene in one movie told the story of so many who, after having been there just had no words.

In the end, I have to keep working because it's the only why I can create(if even by accident) a situation in which I can be reminded of why I am doing what I am. For each of us it is different, if we lose ourselves in the process the only way I have found to cope is to "press on". Just keep on trucking and what you need will find you.