Getting into the mindset to accomplish different things can be a difficult task, especially when it seems like the world is against us. Often times, we feel like the world is against us. We don’t have enough time. We have too many responsibilities to take care of, promises we made to our friends, family obligations, school work, and chores, among other things.
In reality, the main thing that was holding me back was my mindset.
I first realized this when I was nineteen. I was a sophomore at my local community college, and I was afraid of everything. I was afraid of traveling outside of areas I knew, and I was afraid of speaking my mind. I had just gotten my driver’s license, later than most people I knew. I needed one to travel to school and my part-time job at a Halloween store, but I had waited so long because I was scared. I was so scared about merging into lanes, getting into an accident, and driving in cities. In retrospect, it’s funny to think about it now, as I have no issue navigating tiny alleyways and honking at trucks double the size of my tiny Hyundai.
I was scared to travel alone.
But I was also scared of showing my writing, too. As a teenager, I would keep any creative endeavors to myself. I had an idea for a story, and I originally wanted it to be written for a show. But as a teenager with no film experience, that idea went out the window. So I decided to make it a short book, less than 200 pages. Throughout high school and college, I had worked on various manuscripts for books. I wrote a hundred thousand words for a manuscript that had no kind of direction – the work was quite terrible, in fact.
However, in my heart, I knew I wanted to make films. I grew up in a videos store surrounded by tens of thousands of films. Storytelling had always been my passion, but filmmaking seemed so far and complicated. Writing books seemed much easier, so I never thought I could pursue filmmaking even though I learned far more about story through film than I ever did books. I was so fearful of it, though. Writing required just a computer. Film was so much more than just writing a screenplay. It required camera, lights, not to mention an entire crew.
At eighteen, I started working on another book. Fear had stopped me from finishing a manuscript; not just because it was an awful draft, but the thought of revising a large book and then trying to sell my mess of characters and plots to an agent – at nineteen, nonetheless – made me break out into a sweat. Everything from the length to the pacing to the character’s motivations wasn’t right. I didn’t know why I was trying to write these long books when I loved writing shorter stories instead. Writing short books and writing for the screen seemed much easier, but the world of filmmaking seemed so out of my realm, like it existed in another world.
At nineteen, I made a change. After seeing my writer friend publish her first novel, I became inspired by her drive. I was done writing with no goal in sight. I was done with treating college like it wasn’t important. I was done thinking I couldn’t pursue filmmaking. I needed to stop dreaming of what could be, and actually go out and get what I wanted. Between school and work, I finished my first novel. During my last semester at community college, I self-published my book. That same semester, I was accepted into Towson University to pursue a career in film. Between the beginning of 2016 and the end of 2017, I worked at two film studios, joined a media society, produced and worked on a few shorts, and published a second book.
None of that would have happened if I had let the fear take over.
Despite all of this, I still struggle with other flaws. I know there are still many things I need to get over, like stepping outside my comfort zone and so many things I need to do like finishing the multiple screenplays I started and keeping up to date with my website. It was so easy to dismiss the things I longed for because of fear. Fear of difficulty, fear of not being successful, fear of being uncomfortable in new settings. When you get past that fear though, or whatever other emotions are holding you back, it becomes that much easier to go out and live the life you want.
