A roaring bonfire of possibility

I'm going through a cynical phase; at least I hope it's a phase! I think it started about two years ago: I was in a bad relationship and had fallen out of love with the industry. Even though I had just scored a tiny part on The O.C. and was cooking up some more short film ideas, I just felt like I had tried and I had failed. I never thought I'd feel like that, I never thought I'd feel so drained and spent and unsure if what I was doing was right. So in the absence of all those things, I took a job that would pay me a decent wage, something I'd lived without for five years.

I've changed jobs four times since then and ended the relationship but have been single for over a year, and not feeling particularly hopeful about that part of my life either. And now, five months after taking a job that I moved here for, I'm going to be out of work again. My super cool project got killed when leadership changed and funding got cut. But it has been a bumpy ride and there's a chance, it's all for the best. According to my horoscope, which I don't put much stock in except when it seems to kind of be right, the last two years have been putting me to the test but I'm about to finally break out on my own and reap the rewards that I so richly deserve.

Recently I befriended a young man who was supposed to work on my cool project. He's a very talented filmmaker and is just full of life and enthusiasm. He makes his living doing what he loves, has won awards and spent a year traveling the world but there's not a whiff of pretension about him. He's incredibly sweet and down to earth and curious about everything. I don't register any of the doubt and fear and questioning from him that I suffer from, he seems to just do what he loves without any of that.

We were having a drink the other night and I felt like everything that came out of my mouth was cynical, doom and gloom, been there done that, this is what I've learned in the school of hard knocks bullshit. How is it possible, I wondered, that with only ten years between us I'm such a curmudgeon? Has life really been that hard? I'm still young, I have no debt, I'm capable and passionate and curious and the world should still be my oyster. Have I always been this way? People say I'm an eternal optimist but maybe I'm just stubborn and keep going because I'm a creature in motion, not necessarily because I believe in the future.

It seems so long ago, those ten years, yet I remember feeling so different. I think the challenge is not to revert or try to recapture youth, because that isn't possible. You can't unlearn, undo or take back an experience. Even though we "forget," those experiences alter us forever. We are changed by our years. We can, however, let that wisdom be more of a backseat driver than a front seat driver. Shopping with a girl friend last weekend, I saw a huge photo of a teenage girl short shorts and long slim legs. I said to my friend, "Wow, if I'd known then how fleeting those great legs were, I would have worn more short shorts!"

After a minute, it occurred to me that I wore nothing but short shorts, skirts and dresses through my entire teen years. Only once in recorded history did I cover my legs at school. It must follow, then that there are now fleeting moments that I may not be fully appreciating, or more accurately noticing that I'm appreciating. Much of my malaise, I think, is in looking at what isn't instead of what is. (Ironically my annoying ex-boyfriend, the "bad" relationship mentioned above, told me this about our relationship.) Years from now I'll be saying "When I lived in San Francisco, I should have done more ..." or "If I'd known ... while I was working in Silicon Valley, I would have ..." I am already kicking myself for not making more movies when I was in Los Angeles where I have people and friends who wanted to make movies with me. I made everything so difficult, too important, and I focused on what I didn't have (time, money, energy) instead of what I did have (friends, a camera, a computer, ideas).

I think it's easy to be cynical, especially we get older. All the evidence we've gathered over the years supports the theory that life is hard. Everything in the newspaper supports the theory that people suck and we're all gonna die. (I just started getting The Economist which surely isn't helping my mood). But the fact is that hope begets more hope and gloom begets more gloom. So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to start looking at what I have and I'm going to capture each spark of hope and fan the flames until I am a roaring bonfire of life and possibility.