Post-grad

It's official! I'm no longer a student. I'm all grown up now :-) Maybe.

The challenges of the next few months: finding a place to rent (and filling out all the paperwork--yuck), finishing a resume, finishing the DVDs for La Calle Buena, and figuring out what's next.

What do I want to do? Camerawork for now. I love it. I'm not too knowledgeable with the whole exposure-shutter speed-numbers side of thing, but I'm learning. Hopefully I'll find a job as camera assistant or even camera operator by the fall.

What do I want to do in the future? Documentaries...or anything that involves a personal, human perspective. Corporate video? No, thanks. Unless there's some kind of a personal spin on it.

For an introvert, I sure do like people. Not that I like and can tolerate every kind of personality, but people in general fascinate me. One of my greatest joys is to step outside the "box" of my own perspective and see the world through someone else's eyes.

I've discovered the people are complicated, beautiful, broken creatures and that life is never as black and white as we try to make it seem. Everyone has their reasons and their choices that have led them to where they are now, whether good or bad. And often our tendency to label things and people as "bad" or "good" changes once we finally understand where they're coming from.

I believe that, as people, if we can walk a mile in each other's shoes instead of just reacting to one another's choices, we are starting to fulfill our call as Christians (or as human beings, really) to love one another and reflect our Maker.

Jesus dearly and deeply loved people, even though he often objected to their choices. He told the woman caught in adultery to "Go, and sin no more." He accepted her just as she was, yet loved enough to not let her stay as she was. God never lets us stay as we are, and it's the greatest mercy we encounter.

Love is not tolerance or blindly accepting everything as "good." Love is an unconditional desire for someone else to have their greatest good. Love can be a "no" just as much as a "yes." It's not weak or passive--in fact, love is the strongest, fiercest, most unrelenting, pro-active choice a person can make. What else requires us to die to the thing we want to protect the most--ourselves?

My thought is that if I can help someone see through someone else's eyes--even for a few minutes in a short documentary--then I am fulfilling God's call on my life to reflect Him in the world. I don't care about Hollywood, working my butt off to make a name for myself, or going down in history as a famous director or something. It's not what would make me happy. But when I die, I hope the people that know me and my work can say that I was someone who helped them love others more deeply and more truly, and that, because of that, they were able to experience God's love in a more personal way than ever before.