Newsflash: I am not the most patient person in the world.
Newsflash: I have a lot of great ideas but lack follow-through.
Newsflash: Although I hate dissappointing other people, I am the biggest dissapointment to myself.
Last time I started to touch on Liability U and how this blog was supposed to be about the film and not about me. Well, here’s the catch: the film is about me. That’s what I’ve been filming. That’s what I’ve got on video. That’s what I’m reluctant to talk about.
You see, I’m good at telling other people’s stories. Other people are easy for me to disect. It’s easy for me to see their hopes, their dreams, their quirks, their triumphs, their failings and their blindspots.
With me…not so much. Plus I’m pretty sure the whole filming yourself thing…is pretty vain and self-absorbed.
When you top this off with a terminal kind of social anxiety disorder, and the desire to make a “personal” documentary because I personally don’t trust anyone else enough to let them help me…and things get pretty messed up, pretty quick.
But somehow in the midst of all this crap…a film has been making itself. And as I slowly piece it together, I come across this:
A scene of me sitting in my office at my old apartment, sitting at the computer. I’ve just gotten an old hard drive back from having my father repair it, and I’m checking it out to see what’s on it. What I find is a bunch of unfinished business:
– 70 pages of a book I was writing on documentary video production for the weekend filmmaker.
– Character Sketches for a Chick Lit novel.
– A title and outline for a no-bs self-help book.
– A half-finished documentary short on an animal welfare group.
– A short story about a girl and the boy she ran 3000 miles away from.
– And several other starts…that lack a finish.
So what does this have to do with Liabilty U?
It’s always been important to me, that Liability U not be just a long news piece about students, student loans and debt or some kind of video ramble that’s out to convince you that I’m right and the systems wrong. There’s nothing wrong with that, but I wanted to do something a little more subtle, and with a little more depth.
With Liability U, I see the film as really using debt as a metaphor. Yes, it is about student loans, and it’s about student debt, but it’s also about transformation. Transforming your mindset, from one of debt, lack, limitation and living paycheck to paycheck to one of depth, wholeness and finishing things for yourself and not for other people. It’s a film about Net Worth.
Anyhow, I’ve got about 10 minutes cut. There are moments I want to quit the whole thing, and go back to the safe, boring, original idea of doing a news-style film about people in debt. But the point of getting personal is that it gives the audience someone to connect to, and whether they accept it or reject it really doesn’t matter right now. What does matter is that I finish it, despite the fact that I have to work 40 hours a week, don’t have any money, can’t travel or pay a photographer or any of that other noise. You can’t let debt and circumstance hold you back. Just keep moving forward.