Let's get to work

Here's an intense moment of Harrison Ford talking about what it really means to be an actor.  In another interview I just watched, he said that he took a drama course in college mostly because he was lazy.  His grades were slipping, he didn't have any real direction in life, and drama seemed like it would be an easy class, and maybe a way to meet women.  But in that course, and those that followed, he found he really liked the actual work of acting, of being part of this group of people collaborating on a movie set, working to tell a good story.

I was a big fan of the show Inside the Actor's Studio.  While I've never had any interest in being an actor, I am, at heart, a writer.  By the time that show was on, I had already worked on several TV show crews.  I was trying to figure out what to do with my life after burning out on the TV world.  I loved hearing the various actors get deep into what it was like to actually be good at their craft, and their thoughts on acting, which is, basically, telling the stories that writers write. I learned an incredible amount about storytelling from that show.

When Harrison Ford was on the show, where this clip comes from, he told people he was working mostly as a carpenter, repairing houses or building projects for people around the Hollywood area, and taking acting jobs he could get, when the role of Han Solo in Star Wars came his way.  He didn't know it would be a hit, and thought it may likely flop when they shot it.  But the movie took off, and made him a movie star, one who would then get offered good roles on a fairly regular basis.

James Lipton, the host of Inside the Actor's Studio, asked Harrison what he felt when the first Star Wars movie took off.  Harrison rubbed his hands together and said, "OK, NOW we can get to work."  He knew that he could stop being a self-employed carpenter, and he could finally be a serious working actor.  Harrison Ford wasn't in it for the fame and to be a movie star.  He really likes the day to day work of actually being an actor.  He was happy, not that Star Wars made him famous, but that it gave him the chance to get to work at acting full time, from then on.

I'm not Harrison Ford, by any means.  But over the course of my life, I've come to grips with the fact that I'm a highly creative guy, and I like actually doing the work of coming up with new things.  Zines.  Blog posts.  Sharpie drawings.  Videos.  A funny new T-shirt design.  Hopefully a real book one of these days.  But for that last 18-20 years, I've struggled.  I managed to sink to various levels of homelessness for around ten years, on and off, without drinking alcohol or doing drugs.  A whole lot of really crazy shit has happened.  When it comes right down to it, the Universe put me through the wringer to see if I was serious about doing creative work.  I was financially trapped in a part of the country where there just isn't the culture to do highly creative work for a decade.  And that frustrated the fuck out of me.

This past week, with a kind of vague description of a job, no set agreement on pay, and only a little backpack to my name, I made the 72 hour bus ride across the United States.  The trip sucked, Greyhound is a horrible way to travel, but it was the viable option, and it got me here.  I did make dozens of "50 Shades of Greyhound" torture jokes along the  way, though. 

Rich Bartlett, a guy I knew from BMX 30-some years ago, made the trip possible.  We started talking, and I know there are a million things I need to learn technically to make this work.  I need to help jump start an online store using the social media skills I've learned selling my artwork and blogging successfully.  Tired from the bus ride, beaten down after nine, really intense, and nearly deadly, months on the streets of Richmond, Virginia, and hearing all of Rich's different ideas, I was overwhelmed.

But I was still excited.  The reason why is the same reason Harrison Ford was excited when Star Wars took off.  Now, I sense, I can really get to work.  Now I'm at a point where I can dig into the actual day to day work of helping to build up a friend's BMX online store.  I can blog about bicycles, the multi-faceted little vehicles that changed the entire course of my life as a young man.  And I'll spend my spare time still doing some art, and sharing a whole bunch of ideas I have about building small businesses in today's rapidly changing, media saturated world.  I think small businesses, ones that use today's tech and communications well, and are well run, by decent human beings, are our only real hope of building a solid future.  If you read this blog much, you know futurist thinking is a big part what I do.

So now, as I officially have a day off, I can catch my breath, and do some planning.  Because creativity doesn't take days off, it's always going.  And that's how I like it.

Happy Mother's Day to the moms out there.  Have a good one.  Now I'm going to walk to McDonald's and get busy on the next set of ideas to make happen.  That's what I do.