My career goal in life is to become a film director. That’s why  am double majoring in both Theater Studies with a focus in directing and also Film (BA). I’m going to take classes in acting so I can understand how to work with actors and what the mental process of an actor would be. I’m going to take classes in production and post-production so that I will be able to understand the technical aspect of film and therefore be able to communicate exactly what I want to see on screen and therefore get the best outcome possible. I also want to take classes in screenwriting and cinematography just so I can be well rounded and have a greater repertoire to pull from when creating my art.

I know it is a hard thing to break into the film industry, so I will need to support myself in some way. If I am not able to get a good job right out of school making movies then I may continue into graduate study. But then after that or If I do get a good job out of school, I may still not make enough to support myself using only my artistic income, so my plan is to become a teaching artist. Being a teaching artist offers flexible hours and allows me to continue work in my field during the day while giving back to my community and also leaving time to pursue my art in the evenings.

Other than that there’s not really a whole lot else that I can plan. I can’t plan what opportunities will present themselves to me, and I can’t plan whether I will be able to get the jobs that I want. All I can do is prepare myself so that when an oportunity does present itself, I will be ready for it.

Here’s the final version of my elevator pitch. Enough said i think.

Too often in today’s society the overabundance of messages and media desensitizes the population to the realities of what is truly important. People forget fear, people forget hope, people forget what it means to be human. As an artist, my goal is to expose the public once again to these very real emotions, using many artistic medium such as film, music and theater. People are no longer as curious as they used to be. That is why I believe it is my responsibility (not only as an artist, but as a person) to ask questions which arouse people to action which will benefit not only themselves as individuals, but eventually the world as whole.

Action. Reaction. Nothing happens without cause. But what causes what? Chicken or the egg? Does time fly because you are enjoying yourself or are you enjoying yourself because time is flying? Man or myth? And in Soviet Russia, is it really the opposite? And if so, why? Why why why why why? The constant question with the ever-elusive response, that even if found leads only to more confusion. Why is a big question. In general. And even if narrowed only to encompass myself, still pretty huge.

I think it is very rare that anyone can have one single driving motive which influences any and all of their decisions. We all have numerous stimulus which we come into contact with at any one moment of the day, so for me to try to answer what my motivation is would depend greatly on the time in which the question was referring to, the weather, how much I had eaten for breakfast, whether I was wearing shoes or sandals etc. etc. etc.

Because of this inconsistency in regards to why I do certain things, I think it would be easier and perhaps even more relevant simply to answer WHAT I usually do in any given situation (or honestly, which probably anyone does in any given situation), which is to  simply perform the action which I deem will have the highest positive effect on current and or future circumstances, while taking only enough time to do perform the action so as not to interrupt the circumstances just mentioned. B.O.R.I.N.G.

But seriously, is there any other way to adequately  describe the thought process which goes into such an intricate thing as decision making. It’s so complex, what with having to consider context of situation, context of values, context of social norms, context of past experience and context of physiology and everything else, that wouldn’t time be better spent focusing on the what and how of whatever you’re doing (two much easier questions) and save yourself the time?

Arguments could certainly be made that knowing a person’s motivation can lead to a better understanding of how the thought process works and thus the easier manipulation of it in order to get the “most efficient” response possible. And all of that is fine and good. But knowing how the thought process works is not the same as understanding what the thought process is (the aforementioned why) and therefore only really scratches the surface as far as understanding true motivation.

Now, why do I bother saying all of this if it still leads to no definite answer as what motivation is to me personally? Perhaps it is because I simply don’t understand my own motivations and was trying to dizzy you with intellectual hoops to jump through, consequently distracting you from the fact that I never answered the intended question. Perhaps it is because I simply am annoyed by the question and rather than justifying its existence with a response, I am skirting around it in order to maintain the rebellious idea that “It’s my blog, I can write whatever I want!” Perhaps I am uncomfortable with sharing things about myself and therefore set the focus of this blog on the motivations of people in general rather than face the daunting task of talking about things in a more personal context. Or perhaps also, it is a mixture of all three.

Or even also, perhaps I am only writing what I am currently writing in this blog because it is like 2 o’ clock in the morning and I was either too tired to take the effort to come up with an adequate response which answered the question directly or to even realize until too late that I hadn’t really written anything about me at all and apparently WAY too tired to take the time to throw some punctuation in this paragraph .

Nothing happens without cause. And so I don’t end up causing myself to sleep through my first couple of classes tomorrow, I am going to go to sleep.

Everyone has things that they care about, things that they wouldn’t want to see taken away. Things that we value. These can be objects, ideas, or morals, but for them to be truly considered “values” they must be worth something to whoever they belong to. Everything with value, has a consequent price, or else it wouldn’t be worth anything. Therefore it makes sense to say that a value, is something that means enough to you that you would be willing to make a sacrifice for it.

So often in our society, people claim that they have values but when those values are tested, when that person is asked to give up something to maintain that value, they can’t do it. They sacrifice their values for something, rather than making a sacrifice for their values. I would claim that because they are not willing to make a sacrifice for it, that those are not really their values. I’m not saying that they have no values, but simply that they probably are under a false impression of what their values truly are.

That’s why I try not to claim any values which I am not prepared to back up or to make sacrifices for. I have many different values, but for the sake of space, I’ll talk about simply the three main values which underlie nearly all of the action in my life.

The first value that I invest in is honesty. Nothing good has ever come from lying that could not have turned out for the better by simply being honest. I hate it when people lie to me and I also try to be as honest as I can with whoever I’m talking about. Honesty is a big part of who I am and how I interact with the world, and is something I tend not to take lightly.

The second value that I invest in is follow through. This means simply that if you say you are going to do something, do it. Words without action is like trying to cook a complicated dish with no recipe. You have good intentions, but you end up with nothing (or at least nothing that resembles what you were trying to accomplish), and not only are you left hungry, but so is everyone else that you were meant to be cooking for.

The last value that I invest in is courage. Not courage in the way that is made out in movies with sword fighting or saving damsels in distress, but the courage to be who you are, what you are and how you are. Standing up for what you believe in. Trusting the person that you know you are. And never hiding behind a facade of someone you aren’t, because you’re afraid of what other people might think. Fear is a debilitating drug. It’s addictive. The sooner you are able to break out of a pattern of being afraid, the easier it will be for you to live your life the way you want it. Free.

When it comes down to it, when I objectively look at myself, my habits of working are really quite sporadic. They depend on the day, the time of day, what I am supposed to be working on, who I am around when I am supposed to be working on it, how tired I am etc. etc. etc. I would not call myself a disorganized person, but I certainly can’t say that I plan out my study/work periods with any real consistency.

Despite this however, there are some requirements which I keep about the environment in which I study. For example, I may study in many different places, but no matter where I study, I almost always need near absolute silence. Also, whenever I am working on something, I need to have a deadline. It really doesn’t matter whether it is an arbitrary deadline which I set for myself or whether it is a due date for an assignment set by a professor. Simply having a deadline allows less room for my mind to wander because it narrows the focus of my brain and what it needs to accomplish.

I am a terrible multi-tasker. I am not bad at having a lot of things to do, in fact I work best when I am stressed for time. However, if I have more than one thing going on at a time, I find it extremely hard to focus and often end up focusing on something that has nothing to do with what I am trying to get done. For instance, if I try to listen to music while doing a reading assignment I find myself singing along with the lyrics or humming along with the tune rather than actually getting any reading done. So when I have a lot of different things on my plate that I need to get done in a limited time frame, I always just have to focus on one at a time. I may even use something else that I need to work on as a break from another assignment that is taking me a long time to do. My mind gets bored very easily when faced with the same subject over long periods of time, so I find it useful to not work on any one topic for more than 45 minutes to an hour.

The only time when I have a clear idea of how exactly I want to do something is when there is something i need to learn by heart, like a play or vocabulary words for a foreign language. I say learn and not memorize, because memorization (at least for myself) only lasts to the point where I am critiqued on the accuracy of my memorization (like a performance of the play or a vocabulary quiz). However, if I take the time to not just memorize, but actually learn whatever it is that I am supposed to know, making associations and applying the knowledge into practical application and association, then I know that that knowledge is there to stay and is not simply waiting around to be forgotten.

I’m sure that there are a lot of things which I still have to discover about my study habits. Understanding oneself is the first step into unlocking one’s potential. It may take me a lot longer than I may like, but I know that when I get to the point where I understand fully how my mind works and operates, I will able to accomplish things that I wouldn’t have thought possible before. Hopefully that happens sooner rather than later.

I could try and explain who I am in many different ways.

The first thing that I could do is talk about my past. I could give you a list of my famliy ancestry dating back almost 1000 years. I could tell you where I was born, everywhere I’ve lived during my life and all of the schools that I’ve been to. I could even tell you many of the things that I’ve done, and friends that I have had. Most people would agree that the past can be revealing of a person in it’s own way, however, talking about the past is like having a jigsaw puzzle and then not putting it together. You have all of the pieces you need to make the picture, yet you can’t see what they add up to be.

The next thing that I could do is to talk about my future. I could talk about aspirations of becoming a film director. I could tell you about my dreams of reaching people around the world through my art, and in doing so spread a message of hope to those who need it. I could even tell you of my plans to form a foundation for eradicating the epidemic of poverty in our world today. The future can offer a chance to see a person’s potential, but potential is unrealized until appropriate action can be taken, and therefore the future has no real bearing on the person I am today. At least not yet.

I would talk about my present, but at the moment I am writing a blog. And that is hopefully not very indicative of the kind of person I am (Maybe it is. Who knows?).

I suppose if you want to get down to it, the most simple explanation I can come up with to define myself would be this: A man. But that in itself is a dilemma. There are so many different facets of the human genome. So many subtleties of the human psyche. So many possibilities for emotion, action, motivation. To try and adequately define something so complex is ridiculous. I’m not trying to say that I am an unfathomable entity, or that I am “deep”. In fact I as a man am commonplace. However, there are some things that just cannot be held simply within the boundaries of words.

That is why we have art. That is why I am an artist.