make your life a simple story. but well told..

Lots of things going through my head.

But overall, all good things.

I feel like I am a character in a really awesome novel. That I am the writer developing this character to be less and less lame and more and more awesome. Like I was one dimensional, and now I am adding new layers and new capabilities into this small frame. All things that I thought could only contain one set of specifically and genetically trained skills.

The novel has a lot of things happening in it! Some are things I want to happen, some are things that are beyond what I could have dreamed would happen, and some suck really bad. The funny thing is that now the things that suck really bad.. don't really suck at all. My perspective has kinda changed.

I mean that is the only thing you can control... you know. Your perspective on things. You can't really control most of what happens in life otherwise.

Its like my career counselor said before I left Chattanooga. "Sure bad things may have happened to you.. and you can acknowledge them and mourn... but at the end of the day, its about what you learn."

This moment. Being content in this moment.
Is anything bad happening to me in the moment? Can I tolerate this moment? What can I learn from this moment? What is awesome about this moment? What are the cool people around me in this moment? How can I help them and serve them in this moment?

This weird anxiety thing, that I want something beyond this moment and where I am, who I'm with.. is starting to disappear.. and the story of my life is starting to fade up from black. There are certain realities about that, that are depressing.. feeling like you lost time, are a little behind... but a lot of things about that, that are exciting.  People are always writing new pages in their novel and adding to what they have learned, so its not shameful to be working on it.. you always will be.

Ever since I started learning about film technique, I have started to see life like a film. I imagine how I would capture a scene of my life. What coverage I would use.. when or why I would punch in on a close up or when I would use a tracking shot to follow my movements through a scene. What are the important moments that would have to be captured and remembered? And I think, how beautiful! How beautiful my life is! There is a certain elegance to my journeys and discoveries as I would see them on film because I really think am a good character. I like building those scenes, sequences and acts of my film because I believe in myself and I know it will turn out good... in the end, even if it is hard along the way.

So Thanksgiving. Its making me excited. Because the person I am now is going to go on a journey. I am going to sit in the back of my parents car and watch the endless evergreen trees go by and make it up to the Skagit Valley to see my grandparents. The scene will show me reading a book, staring out at the river in their back yard and the ducks bobbing around within it. Me lying in my Dad's old bed at night and listening to the trains whistle by. Me smiling to myself as my uncle talks about the latest Robbie Rodriguez project and what failed project Joss Whedon has been writing. The way the light filters down the steps to my grandparent's spooky basement and the way the carpet feels on my feet. And who I am in those scenes? Every detail of who I am in those scene is picked, written by me. Will I playfully wear the berry lip gloss when I go to church, or be plain and "quaker" to not attract attention? Will I say that edgy joke or keep it inside and laugh silently? Will I help clean the dishes.. talk with my grandpa? Or ignore that opportunity.. and watch TV instead. Be present in every moment and choosing, maximizing every moment as much as I can control it.

For your choices don't really include what you envision and wish for your life. That's in the future. Your choices are what you have and who you are right now.


It is easy, when you are young, to believe that what you desire is no less than what you deserve, to assume that if you want something badly enough, it is your God-given right to have it....I was a raw youth who mistook passion for insight and acted according to an obscure, gap-ridden logic. 
-Jon Krakauer p.155 Into the Wild
(thanks Beau Sherman for posting)

Becoming aware of all of these youthful things within me, I choose to talk to my grandpa when I have a chance.. to enjoy the feeling of 70's carpet between my toes.. run down to the duck pond with my dog and scare the ducks.. watch Ronin with my uncle for the 3rd time, haha because he wants to give me a film education :) .. lie awake at night a hear the trains go by and remember the conversations me and brother would have late into the night there..

And enjoy that.

Whatever it is is, that's what life is all about:
a simple story, told very, very well.