New Mexico. Land of Enchantment.
This place has been calling to me for many reasons, depending on the year. For years. I neglected the calling. I was determined to do whatever it took to not do anything. Determined to prove right my despair and sadness and worthlessness I had felt. I didn't want to take a chance, for anything, for any reason. I wanted to stay safe in that horrible comfort zone of despondency. I felt like I belonged in that dreadful palace. I think judging by my previous entries here that I don't need to delve any further into that mad world my mind and soul and heart inhabited. Let's just say that it was fucking awful, and New Mexico was a dim beacon of hope. And I had to subconsciously avoid it.
Then something happened. I don't really know what it was. A combination of support and opportunity. An elixir of hope and madness. A little cake mix of a shed overcoat, tattered and ugly, and a new found ambition to BE more than I was, frosted with the fear of becoming what I was slowly turning into. I don't know what made me come here. What came over me to abandon my ills and sell what i could, borrow what was offered and drive 6 short miles from the only home I'd known toward a place completely unknown, with no true chance even presented to me. It was a sensation beyond hope, jut past it's influence. Something even more pure and divine.
Knowingness. Knowingness that it is time. It is finally time to DO something. THE time to do it. I wasn't ready in the years before. I was too hurt, too scared, and ironically maybe a little too cocky. But things fell together too perfectly. My road was open, even though maybe it always has been, maybe just covered by a flimsy thicket or copse of ancient oaks. Leaving wasn't as hard as I thought. The hugs and kisses from my family. The confident and proud smiles that i never saw from people I always needed them from. The proud handshake and shoulder slap. Even the teary eyed kiss goodbye from the best girl for me I've ever know, and I've known a few seemed more encouraging than smothering.
This was time, and I went. 3 suitcases, 2 backpacks and my aging computer packed full my aging arthritic car. I drove and drank coffee, smoked cigarettes and listened to Pandora. I'd pull over for gut bomb gas station food and Life Waters. The miles passed faster than the time. I called my girlfriend, Nicki, and talked to her, crying under my sunglasses at her pride and support of me. I didn't know I'd miss her as much as I did, but I knew how much I love her. Ponderosa tree filled mountain vista morphed into smaller ones densely dotted with Pinons.
I arrived and unpacked at the house of an Emmy nominated sound mixer who would be shacking me up, if you can call living in a mansion in the hills of Sante Fe being shacked up. This was my home, and when I was home I talked to him about his incredible adventures during his career. Listened while he reminisced about old Hollywood, and while he grumbled about how things have changed. We talked about just about everything in the 2 months I've been here. I read his scripts and gave him notes, and he tells me everyday that he will read mine. But most of my nights here have found me lost and sad, alone on the bed I can't fall asleep on in a room that I can't write in. It's a beautiful house and the man who let me stay there has become a good friend, but it isn't home. These feelings are overwhelming when I don't have work, pushed and chased by worries of money and bills and my life back home; my real home.
I have worked in the movie business. I did it. It has been incredible and I know this is what I want to do, just not in the way of work I've done out here. This time has also sort of seemed to have acted like vision quest to me, because as wonderful and eye opening as it has been, it has been very very hard. It made me see things in a new light, and crap open the hard shell covering my soul. Funny as it also may sound, I even smoked some weed for the first time in ages and that gave me more insight than anything, including therapy and meditation. I have lived an unfulfilled life not because I was working in the movies. I have been living an unfulfilled life because I haven't been doing anything to make it fulfilling. It has been my choices as much as my circumstance. I have dwelled on my unhappiness and everything that I wasn't happy about myself with, tricking my mind into creating this unhealthy world to hide away inside.
The past two months have been the best two months of my life. The hardship is far outweighed by the experiences I have had, and the alone time to ponder things. I don't need to be here to do what i really want to do, and nothing is stopping me from doing all of the things I have ever dreamed of aside from how hard I am willing to try to make those a reality for me. And I know i can do it.
Lots of change is coming, and I am very grateful for my time here. But it is time to forge ahead, and create the change I need to change into the person I truly am and want to be. Thank you New Mexico. Thank you film industry and thank you painful loneliness. it opened my eyes to my own self destructive patterns and ugliness, and it is time, a joyous time, to live my life to my highest and most blissful potential. I am proud of myself, truly proud without a thought of arrogance. I did it. Now it's time to do my own.
