Learning Again To Do One Thing

ROCHESTER, New York- I really want to go back to where I began. Not to my family’s home. Not to Western New York. But to where I was 20-something years ago when I began the singular pursuit of writing. For ten years I would roll out of bed, flip open the laptop, and just write. I had no other ambition, no other goals. My pursuit was simple: explore something, talk to myself about it, transcribe whatever came out onto the screen.

While my first blog post was typed out as part of a night of otherwise forgettable drunken escapades in Japan on April Fool’s day in 2004, the real beginning of this blog didn’t happen until the following December. It was Christmas time. My parents had gifted me my first laptop to take with me on my first semester of university study in Hangzhou. It was a giant, two-inch-thick brick of Dell … an electronic monstrosity that today would be suitable for a nostalgia exhibit or on tucked in the messenger bag of the most tried and true of hipsters.

Later on that night, after everyone had given their presents and all the Christmas formalities were complete, I snuck away to my room and opened up that laptop, loaded Blogspot, and began writing. I remember … the keys felt electric, my fingers flew around as thoughts became words, as words became statements. Few things in my life had ever felt as good as hitting that publish button. All of my aimless ambitions up to that point — the marine biology, the archaeology, the months that I lived in the North Country thinking I was going to be a forest ranger — were relieved of their relevance. In that moment I knew that I had found what I was looking for.

For the next decade I was solely focused on writing. While I would still do my yearly stint of archaeology fieldwork for the next few years before I was sufficiently financially established as a writer (and in those days being sufficiently financially established meant making $15 a day), I knew then that it was just something temporary that I was doing for the money. I would quit for good at the end of 2008, putting myself in a sink or swim type of position: I would make it as a writer or starve trying. This is really the only way to do it if you want to make it at something.

I’m not going to claim that developing as a writer full time wasn’t a struggle. But I kept going and pulled it off somehow — the first book deal helped. Eventually, writing developed into a decent career, my stories were regularly on the front page of Forbes, I was doing features for the Guardian, I ran the gauntlet of other big media publications. But today this path has left me at a crossroads.

I am blessed / cursed with uni-focus — the ability to focus / obsess on a single task for a dozen hours at a time, everyday for weeks / months / years on end. My mind works best when it’s fed the same meal breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I am able to accomplish large tasks. I am able to learn difficult skills. I am able to do big things … but only when I do one thing.

Variety splinters my drive into frayed ends where the parts that don’t add back up to the whole. When I am passionate about multiple things, I am passionate about nothing. And I toddle down wayward paths and don’t accomplish much of anything.

I have second passion that competes with writing: filmmaking. At first, I didn’t think they would be at odds. It’s all just storytelling, isn’t it? These two pursuits seem as if they derive from the same source and arrive at similar destinations but the mental processes that go into them couldn’t be more different. Writing is an internal dialogue where you are the main character. YOU live your story. Documentary is a process of watching and observing, where the camera becomes an invisibility cloak, where the subject in front of the camera is the main character and you are merely pointing at the moon.

For whatever reason, I cannot think in both ways at the same time. Either I have the dialogue of writing going through my head for all of my waking — and, honestly, some of my sleeping — hours or I don’t. Likewise, I can not just flip a switch and feel the lighting and live in the frames as you need to do with filming. They both require extended runways … and I’m not sure why. The past ten years have been a battle between these two pursuits which has created some successes (a doc that aired in theaters, a narrative feature coming out this year) but, ultimately, I’m left disappointed.

I need to make a choice. Do one thing.

I worked a ton to end the year — the work for $$$ kind of work, the worst sort. I worked so much that I knew I was going to have to sit down and ask what the fuck am I doing?

I did too many small things last year. I set out with the goal of really make ground with my film company, and I did just that … in terms of earnings anyway. Not the kind of ground that I was envisioning … I traded too much time for money, a deal that you will never win.

This year will be different.