"Metastasizing the despair and disappointment of my life..." is the rather self aggrandizing answer I gave when a friend asked what I was doing on my 50th birthday. It was both very true to me and a complete fabrication on most levels. I have a home, a wife that loves me and kids who, when they can be pried from their amusements are very pleasant and who also love me. In that "It's A Wonderful Life" scenario, I am a very lucky Jimmy Stewart. However... My life's work has been a disappointment to be sure; what started out as daring and interesting, has evolved into a mundane service to corporate ego. What ever excitement I had hoped from living a life in film has been squandered on mortgage payments, watching TV and quietly drinking mediocre beers in my living room with the shades drawn. I watched a video on a 23 year old girl from New Jersey who has created a school and orphanage in Nepal through hard work and clear eyed optimism and I suddenly realized that I have lived the last 30 years in a haze of low expectations and minimal risk. I created one unwatchable "independent" (read "crappy") feature film in the 1990s and gave up. The end of the beginning? That was long ago. That was the slogan of my high school graduation, and many of those people I graduated with, once young and full of potential, all play golf in flip flops now, pretending that they have made it or not caring. What we have now is the end of the middle portion. The shut down of hope and pure joy due to dietary concerns over constipation. It is the inevitable evaporation of my potential. I fear for my soul. When the rapture of Harold Camping approached a week before my birthday I watched closely, not knowing why. I know now: I feel as though the end is much closer than it ever has been (lets face it, every day is closer) and I want to make a contribution more than making Microsoft execs look and sound human.
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