BEGINNING AT THE END

September always makes me think of school. Of crisp notebooks, new pens, exchanging my summer bag for a small backpack. Of cool air, apple trees, donuts covered in sugar and warm spiced drinks. Of the leaves changing colors and falling away. Of evolution.

It makes me feel brand new, but it also reminds me that the end of the year is coming. A little death. The death of 33 and the oncoming of 34. It makes me re-evaluate my days and as I get older, my years. Where has the time gone? What have I done with it? Have my hours been put to good use or wasted?

Recently, I’ve been thinking about how I measure my life by a To Do list of Accomplishments. Did I further my career? Did it grow? You still haven’t made your first feature film yet. You’re still trying to convince increasingly risk-averse producers and financiers to take you on. They love the script, but if you just had another film under your belt, a proven track record, they’d do it in a heartbeat.

It makes me feel like a failure. Makes all the emails and meetings and coffees and pitches and years feel like a waste. People only respect the hustle if there are results and as a filmmaker, it’s hard to see them most days. Scripts pile up on my hard drive like spiderwebs in the corner of my bedroom. I don’t sweep them away though. What if that insect I can’t see during the day comes home at night when I’m asleep?

And the tunnel vision doesn’t help. When I’m writing, I hone in on my stories and focus with unparalleled willpower. Nothing gets through my wall. I realized this when I was taking meetings in LA this past May. Everyone asked what my hobbies were outside of film and I couldn’t think of any. I didn’t have any and I couldn’t remember when they fell away.

For years, I spent my days writing and my nights watching movies, not because I loved them, but for research. To become a better filmmaker. Where had my personality gone? When did I become one note? Life is full of many loves and only having one that felt stagnate made me deeply depressed. Since then I’ve been trying to reconnect with the parts of myself I had forgotten.

2 years ago, I studied Spanish for 7 months in preparation for a month alone in México and I loved that time in my life. I loved spending hours on Duolingo, watching grammar videos on Youtube, listening to Latin American music, discovering new artists on Spotify. I loved it even more when I got to CDMX and could speak.

10 years ago, I spent my nights producing music in Logic, writing songs, recording snippets of what it felt like to be in my early twenties. It’s cringe to listen to now and I’ll never share those songs, but it was honest and real and fun. Just me, alone in my studio apartment, fresh out of college, imagining where I would be at 33.

And the progress for both these things were so tangible. I could see myself getting better at Spanish and music every week. And because they were hobbies, they never made it on the To Do list of Accomplishments, but I felt accomplished doing them. I felt like my life was whole. I felt fulfilled.

So this September, as the leaves change and I can hear the ticking clock passing by, I’m going to practice Spanish again and pick up some instruments. I’m always going to write. I’m never going to stop being a filmmaker, but I want to get back to me. All of me.

I hope you’re doing something that makes you happy too. Something that makes you feel like you.