Gone Missing and Self-Doubt

 JULIET
 O think'st thou we shall ever meet again? 

 ROMEO
 I doubt it not; and all these woes shall serve
 For sweet discourses in our time to come.

I actually had to search for my own blog.  It has been awhile since I posted here.  Much has gone on in my life in recent months, some great and some not so great.  Overall, it has been the most wonderful thing each of us is blessed with, living a life.

This past summer was a good summer filled with fun times, great friends and wonderful memories.  It was great to spend a great deal more time with my wife and children during the summer.  I had the great opportunity to attend my High School Reunion where I reconnected with many wonderful friends of the past.  I really did have a great time.

Sadly, as my last post indicates, my Father passed away this past summer as well.  My Mother is still feeling the deep sense of loss and loneliness following a sixty-year marriage.  I am in awe of their ability to keep their marriage together for so long, something I will never experience.  Unless, I manage to live to be 106 years-old and my wife does not toss me out.

I took on a new job.  I decided to return to Rail Road and earned my Locomotive Engineer’s License.  It is a fun job, albeit somewhat stressful.  I have never experienced in my life a stressful moment like that which comes with the controls of a train and a human placing themselves in front of that train by accident or by design.  The Engineer does all they can to preserve that person’s life, but in the end, the Engineer is really just a spectator to a horrific event.
 
I started a hobby.  This hobby is a great deal of fun for me.  I have to be careful because I could completely spend too much time with this hobby.  Truth be told, I wish it were a career more than a hobby.  This hobby consumed the time that I used to spend on this blog.  I wrote a complete screenplay using a logline that was created for a contest.  This tested my creativity and story telling abilities.  Hearing a logline for the first time and then creating an entire story and screenplay from that logline is challenging.  The logline is a short sentence or phrase explaining the screenplay or movie. 

“A 17th Century tale of adventure on the Caribbean Sea where the roguish yet charming Captain Jack Sparrow joins forces with a young blacksmith in a gallant attempt to rescue the Governor of England’s daughter and reclaim his ship” … Pirates of the Caribbean.   

The above logline is what the screenplay writers used to write or describe the movie.  Many times writers or aspiring writers have an idea about a movie and have mapped out the details in their minds for years.  When someone provides a logline for you, it is not something you have worked on or thought of and this is where you find if you really have any talent as a writer.  It was challenging and a great deal of fun.
 
I have learned that I am not nearly as thick-skinned as I would like to be.  I have shown only two people and both really liked my screenplay.  One of those is a Film Director and they have encouraged me to market this and see if it can be sold.  My thoughts on the matter are it was an excellent training and education.  Self-doubt is a killer of many dreams and denies the world of many great experiences. 
 

“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”   …Sylvia Plath

Today my imagination was stirred when I was visiting my Mother and watched a program with her called “The Chew”.  On this episode, an actor named Andrew McCarthy was on the cooking segment.  The Chef was telling the audience about Andrew’s newest job of writing segments for National Geographic Travel and other writing jobs for traveling the world.  The Chef asked Andrew if he had gone to school or obtained great amounts of education in obtaining the new job.  Andrew said that he simply discovered he had a passion for traveling and writing.  Following what he did for his acting passion, he found a way to turn his passion into an income.  He is now paid for doing what he loves.  Andrew McCarthy, job well done for pursuing your passions that ultimately leads to people’s enjoyment.  May we all learn to be so bold and brave to follow our passions and dreams.  

"It's heartbreaking to see so many people trapped in a web of enforced idleness, deep debt, and gnawing self-doubt"   ...William J. Clinton

"Self-doubt kills talent"   ...Edie McClurg

"I found my first novel difficult. I don't want to make it sound like it's any more difficult than driving a cab or going to any other job, but there are so many opportunities for self-doubt, that you just kind of need to soldier on"   ...Anthony Doerr