Brandon's Journal

Last Thursday, I posted a blog titled Hope. I wasn't happy with how it turned out and the next morning I deleted it from the blog. I had hoped to re-write it on Friday, but we were in the process of moving and I guess I wasn't feeling very hopeful. Now, a few days later, I'm ready to give this topic another go and hopefully I'll express myself a bit better this time around.

I'm not sure when I gave up on hope, or even why. Who really keeps track of those sorts of things? There was no sudden moment where something happened that destroyed the hope inside me. Instead, it just dissolved until one day, I realized it wasn't there anymore.

It was a friend, who first pointed out that I had lost my hope and that moment has been etched into my mind for over ten years now. The conversation came about when I showed my friend some footage from my Skin Deep DVD that I mentioned in the last post. He watched me ramble on about my film making in this old video and he just casually mentioned, “You had so much hope in your eyes.” The comment took a second to settle in and then I looked at the younger and happier version of me on the television screen and I knew it was true. I had no more hope left in me.

How do you get hope back? I think it's similar to trying to find religion after you've lost it. The experience is entirely familiar, but getting back there is a near impossible feat. The think both finding hope and faith again are so difficult because you've already been there before. You once had it in your grasps but then it broke and you were forced to come to terms with this broken thing inside you. You try so hard to put it back together, but no matter how hard you try gluing it back together just isn't the same. You know how fragile it is and that makes it hard to lean into.

I thought it was fate last week that during a conversation my buddy Alex mentioned a great quote from The Shawshank Redemption.

Like Red in the film, I too was scared of hope. It seemed way too dangerous of thing to deal with. It made people feel invincible in a world where no one was. In my eyes, it was just a way to build you up so that your fall is even harder.

This manifested a variety of ways in my personal life. One of the most noticeable of ways was when planning to do just about anything. For example: if I planned a vacation or a trip to a convention, I automatically assumed it would go terrible or would be cancelled. I never allowed myself permission to get excited because by doing so I felt like I was setting myself up to be crushed. It was just easier to assume the worst and hope for the best.

So, why talk about hope? Well... I found some inspiration for hope in the most ironic of places, the television show Raising Hope. A few weeks ago, I started watching the series on Hulu and I came across an episode where the family decides they have to give up on the small things that offer them hope. For the father, it was a weekly lottery ticket. For the mother, it was hoarding various high end items that the family could fill a bigger home with in the future. For the son, it was constant trips to the grocery store to flirt with the pretty cashier with a boyfriend. They made a pact to each give up these little indulgences and in a typical sitcom fashion it doesn't go so well.

Everyone became irritable and grumpy. The family the show is centered on is a poor family who struggles as is, and taking away these little wishes from their life gave them very little to look forward to. I sat watching and recognizing how real this situation was. What do people have to look forward to if they won't allow their imagination to run a little wild? It's not like the family was putting every dollar into lottery tickets, they just bought one a week and then talked about what they would do with the money. In my eyes, that $52 a year is worth hundreds of dollars more in what the family actually gets from it.

I realized that after spending most of my adult like hopeless, I needed this back in my life. I needed to dream a little. I needed to lead into some crazy ideas that probably won't work out, but it won't hurt trying. This is one of the reasons that I was even open to the idea of making a movie. I knew I couldn't glue my hope back together and pretend like it was the same, but I could grow and cultivate some new hope. It took some time and some self-awareness, but I feel like I planted a seed of hope that I hope will grow into a little bit more. I think my mental health and just life in general could use that. Hope is the depression killer.

And as much as I love Red's quote from The Shawshank Redemption, I think Andy counter it's quite well in his letter to Red at the end of the movie.

Growing up, I didn't aspire to be much. I had a short phase where I wanted to be a Navy SEAL and another one where I wanted to be an NBA player. I had a fantasy about becoming a professional wrestler in middle school and I spent my high school years thinking about joining the ministry. But once I reached the end of high school, there was no doubt in my mind what I wanted to be: a filmmaker.

I had grown up with a love of film cultivated by years of hanging out in video stores and collecting various movies. The 90's independent scene was red hot with names like Kevin Smith, Robert Rodriguez, and Quentin Tarantino breaking out and making the type of movies they wanted to make, not the normal stuff the Hollywood machine churned out. Even better, all three men were film geeks like myself, and that gave me something to aspire to.

The earliest origins of my film making dream can be dated back to sitting in study hall my freshmen year of high school. It was here that I spent my free time writing scripts for the movies I wanted to see which were mostly sequels of the films I loved. I wrote a sequel to The Rock as well as Ghostbusters (the opening scene was pretty awesome with the Ghostbusters fighting off the ghost of Andre the Giant in Madison Square Garden.) I dabbled with some of my own original ideas and eventually decided it was time for me to break out my dad's old camcorder and make my own short. I wrote an Evil Dead inspired script that would take place in the shed in our backyard that sadly I never made.

It wasn't until I found myself working at Blockbuster and dreaming with my buddy Matt did my dreams of film making begin to come true. With his unrelenting support, I found myself standing in a Black Friday line at Best Buy at 4:30 AM hoping to get my hands on an entry level MiniDV camera. I did not freeze my gonads off in vain, as I walked out with a camera and I immediately got to work at writing a script.

I took some advice from Robert Rodriguez's Rebel Without a Crew, a book I read over and over again. I thought about what I had access to and then wrote my script around that. I knew I had my buddy Matt, my friend Anthony was coming into town for Christmas, and two females. I had my house, my girlfriend's apartment, and a park. I started crafting a story around these people and locations and what emerged was a short film titled Skin Deep. It was quite progressive for 2004, as it was the story of a black man who falls in love with a white girl online, but she has no idea he's black until she shows up for their first real life date. She rejects him and afterwards we see the fall out her actions in both of their lives.

I'd be lying if I said it was amazing. It wasn't. It was written quickly and I had one meeting with Matt to go over some notes and then we started putting things into motion to get filming as soon as possible. I assembled a home made steadycam, bought a MiniDisc player to record audio on, and started loosely putting together some props. It was a practice film and it was what would hopefully be the first in a long list of films that Matt and I worked on together. We were already bouncing ideas around for the next film and we had high hopes that we would learn all that we needed to on Skin Deep so that we could get serious the next go around.

Sadly, it just wasn't meant to be. The production was hindered by all sorts of issues. It took some significant sweet talking to convince Anthony (who never wanted to act) to join our little movie. My girlfriend was even less enthused about possibly taking part. Then once we began filming, a freak ice storm hit Memphis and production grinded to a halt. Even worse, my father who did not approve of my hobby/career of choice, did just about everything he could to discourage me including shutting down our production the day of.

We ended up with 40 minutes of useless footage that we got alot of laughs out of. I cut together a blooper reel that was quite funny and Matt and I recorded not one, but TWO commmentary tracks for the DVD. We also recorded intros ala Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier on all of his early DVD releases. As much as it was disappointing to not have a finished product worth watching, it was a lot of fun. I enjoyed every minute of the process and I had hope the next go around would be even better.

Life got in the way, yet again, when my father's alcoholism got the best of him and I found myself crashing in the corner of a bedroom trying to make ends meet. Eventually, I gave up and moved to North Carolina to be near family that could assist me in finishing up school and getting back on my feet. Matt and my dream died when I left Tennessee, and despite a few starts and stops over the years, I had pretty much given up on the idea of ever filming something again.

In fact, the reason I've focused so much on my writing is because it's such a solitary act, I knew I wouldn't be reliant on anyone else, nor could I let anyone down with it. I could just craft a story as I seemed fit, and then walk away when I was done with it.

The couple of times I put together some script outlines or even discussed the possibility of shooting something I let people get into my head. Unfortunately, I'm not surrounded with folks who support the creative arts, so I gave up deciding that this was just one dream that wasn't meant to be.

Recently, however, I've been giving a lot of thought to dying and what I might regret. It was during some of this self-reflection that I remember something I used to say, “I don't want to be forty and have never made a movie.” This thought rattled me as forty is just over two years away for me and well... I haven't made a movie.

As fate would have it, I found myself watching a lot of Kevin Smith films recently, my original muse. I also discovered Mr. Inbetween, that was spun off a documentary created by one man, who wrote, directed, produced, and acted in his film. Then this past weekend, I was attempting to finish Stuart Gordon's Space Truckers which has been a bit of a struggle for me. I decided to search and see what people thought of Space Truckers on reddit when I ran across a post that recommended watching Space Trucker Bruce, an extremely low budget film shot over a several years inside a man's house where he built all the sets out of cardboard.

It dawned one me then that neither Anton Doiron (director of Space Trucker Bruce) and Scott Ryan (creator of Mr Inbetween) did not let a lack of people, support, or money stop them from telling the stories they wanted to tell. Sure, there movies may look a bit amateurish or “B movie” style, but the went out there and did it, something I've failed to do after all these years.

I found myself researching no-budget/micro budget film making and exploring what options might be available to me. I quickly began formulating a story concept in my mind for a short film starring just two people. My research led me almost down the dangerous road I've been down before of too much information and too many people tell what to do and what not to do. There is so much information out there its easy to become a student of it all and a dreamer and not an actual doer. So, I've decided to only research specific topics I need advice on (gear, sound recording) and try to allow my own common sense get me by.

I'm not sure when I'm going to get a chance to shoot my movie. Obviously, in the midst of moving right now is not the best time, but a seed has been planted. I'm going to get something done before I turn forty, even if it's a two minute film about nothing. But for right now, I'm going to seek out no budget inspiration, begin experimenting with getting good shots with my phone, and allow this dream to come back into my life.

A few nights ago, I sat down to write this blog. It ended up going a little sideways, but there was still a message inside here that I wanted to talk about. It's the potential to make yourself better, or more specifically, the potential inside me to make myself better.

It took a me a long time to realize that any given moment is an opportunity to change the way I think, live, and aspire. Every morning, when I wake up, I make conscious decisions that aren't always easy. About a year ago, I read this interesting article on StarTrek.com about Anson Mount's portrayal of Captain Pike in Star Trek: Discovery. The article, goes into detail on why a good, righteous character seems to refreshing in a world of anti-heroes. As the tagline to the article states, “It turns out that the story of a good man is still one that's worth telling.”

One of the aspects of the article that stuck with me for so long is the concept that it's difficult to choose to be good. Everyday, you wake up and make a choice on whether to be good or bad. A choice of being rude of polite. A choice to love or hate. We make hundreds if not thousands of these choices everyday and it's an accumulation of those choices that make up the very being that we are. I like to think that there are always better choices to be made deep down inside, it just takes courage and effort to make them.

When I realized my mental health was declining far quicker than I could handle, I made the decision to purchase a book called Mind Over Moods. It not the most revolutionary book I've ever read (like the reviews promised) but it gives me something to work on everyday or every couple of days, which keeps me focused on improving my mental health. I think that sort of consistently is what garners the most results. Ya know, the whole practice makes perfect idea.

Somewhere around fifteen years ago, I read a book on Wicca. I like learning about different religions and cultures, and this book was pretty enlightening. It helped rectify some of my false beliefs about the religion/lifestyle/philosophy but what I took most from it was the idea of casting a spell. See, in my mind, I assumed that Wiccan's casting spells closer resembled cosplay or wishful thinking than anything that would actually be helpful. But I remember the example the book gave for a money spell. It was simple, everyday when the person came home from work, they'd place a dime in a dish next to a green candle (to represent money) and then light the candle. That was it, that was the spell.

Now, this isn't near as interesting as anything I've ever seen on television, however, I saw where it could be useful. The idea of  keeping up with a dime daily and making an intentional act in placing the dime and lighting the candle, meant that how you handled money was always on your mind, or at least it was once a day. This sort of daily reminder could easily guide into making better choices, which could in return, help grow your bank account. I see it as a sort of WWJD bracelet for Wiccans.

Those daily practices may not make perfect, but they do making improvements in your life. So, I've been attempting to utilize as many as I can to help me better myself.

Another daily tactic I'm using is listening to podcasts that can inspire or teach me better ways to handle the struggles of daily life. I recall a few years ago when I had a much longer drive to work, I'd rotate out the podcasts I listened to almost daily, but I always kept a Buddhist teaching and What's This Tao All About in my rotation. It was almost as if I was attending church during those drives and it gave me new tools in my toolbox to manage everyday life.

As my commute shortened, the amount of time I spent listening to podcasts or talks of this nature dropped dramatically as did my interest in these topics. I stopped making time for them and in result, I stopped feeling the positive effects from them as well.

Nowadays, I listen to podcasts while I'm working and I like smaller podcasts that get right to the point. So, I've been listening to the Stoic Coffee Break amongst a few other Stoic philosophy based podcasts. These short bite sized lessons are easy to consume and almost always gives me something to think about in regards to my own reactions in life. Most importantly, because the lessons are short, I'm able to listen to them on almost a daily basis which like the green candle and dime, it helps keep my mind focused on being present and working through my emotions.

Things aren't perfect in my life, nor will they ever be, but I feel like I'm working towards being a better person and being the type of person who can handle adversity a little bit better. I plan on talking about the role of hope in a future blog and how that has played a positive role in helping bring me out of this funk.

I've spent the past month moving my belongings into storage. My wife and I are in the processing of moving into my parent's house after a freak turn of events occurred back-to-back. I'd be lying if I said I was excited about it. In fact, I'm downright dreading it. I was as comfortable as I've ever been in my adult life and the idea of living in a tiny workout room at my parent's house and losing the freedom and privacy that come with having your own place, is just not something I'm thrilled about.

I've been forced to face down a lot of negative self-talk. I've beat myself up quite badly and blamed myself for having to ask my parents for a place to stay. I conveniently ignore the role of a global pandemic and a greedy apartment complex played in this while telling myself I was a loser, but I'm finally moving into a mind space where I can stop the mental abuse and look forward to what comes next.

I've always been pretty self-aware about my mental issues. I know I struggle with depression and anxiety and over the years, I've experimented with a variety of different ways to combat the negativity. Meditation, philosophy, Buddhism, comfort television, intentional music listening, exercise, etc. have all been tools to help me make it through life a little easier. I felt like a couple of years ago, I finally found a good balance and I was coasting along with everything under control. Then this year happened. One set back after another set back occurred and I lost my ability to manipulate or will myself into contentment. I woke up every morning to a mountain to climb and after several weeks, I was too exhausted to do it anymore. The depression and anxiety crept back in and I spent way more time writing about suicide then I'd like to admit.

It was as if all my tools were no longer working, or they just weren't strong enough for the job. So, I began trying other things like prayer, which unfortunately didn't offer me the relief I was hoping it would.

Luckily, I'm blessed with some pretty great friends. Several people began checking in more regularly with me and one friend even opened up quite a bit about his own anxiety. It's been nice to have these little lifelines that always seemed to pop up via text just when I needed them.

I realized two weeks ago, that I needed to start putting more effort into my mental health as well as some self improvement. I began reading a book called Mind Over Moods which has helped a smidge. It's not life changing, but it's helped get me back on track and has allowed me to recognize the “automatic thoughts” that occur in my head on a daily basis.

I also began listening to some podcasts that deal more with philosophy and psychology. I guess, I managed to surround myself with some new tools and new ideas to explore.

This blog post was originally going to be about bettering myself and I guess in a strange way it sort of is, but this was definitely not the blog I was planning to write, but maybe it was the blog that I needed to write. I want to spend a little less time discussing pop culture and a little more about life. Sort of like what I was experimenting with the podcast a month or so ago.