When I was 21 I rode in a car with a man who said to me "regret is a
horrible thing, live your life so that when you reach 50 you won't live
back and wish you had done it differently". I took those words to heart.
When I was 22 I faced a fork in the road of my life. Would I go into
professional sound editing for television, or would I go into computer
support work?
A few days ago a friend of mine won an Academy Award. The first Biolan
to have ever done so. Back in the late 90's he once offered me a chance
to come do I.T. at his company. I turned the job down, and I knew the
person who was hired in my stead. Within a few years she had a film
credit.
Getting a film credit is on my 'bucket list'. However recently I've
been challenged by a friend to consider changing a bucket list to a
'poured out bucket list'. Where you find a way to take the things
you've always wanted to do, and turn them into things you've always
wanted to do for OTHERS.
This sparked a thinking process in me.
Where would I be, if I had decided 17 years ago, to go into sound
editing for Horta sound, instead of going into computer work.
Here's my major thought : "I'd still be here, in PNG, doing this job."
I am laboring with absolute confidence (have you ever been absolutely
confident of anything? It's rare and wonderful and scary) that I am
exactly where I'm supposed to be. I get daily, weekly and monthly
affirmations that I was designed to do this job from the day I was born
if not before.
So then what would be different?
-I wouldn't have had so many great memories with my good friend Mark and
Andy. Because I would never have moved back to the Bay Area, nor worked
for Sun Micro.
-as a result my friend Andy may have met his wife sooner (-;
-I wouldn't have worked in computer support in PNG, because I wouldn't
have any skills in that area.
-My kids would be younger at the very least, because I couldn't have
afforded to get married when we did.
Part of my thinking took me down the whole 'well then I wouldn't know anyone in the Bay Area, and wouldn't have heard about PNG like I did.' Except I still attended church in the Bay Area in college and would have heard, I believe. It's a silly mental exercise, but I do lots of those anyway.
Unless you have had a moment of extreme clarity, where you understand what you were built to do, it's hard to explain how there is zero regret. Even the people I've met here who have had REALLY hard lives before coming here, can't regret the hardships that brought them here. Because they know God used them to forge their character.
It's so hard to accurately judge what WOULD have happened, but I know I
would have still ended up here doing this, because EVEN the stuff I
learned while on that other path to becoming a sound editor has been
helpful here. Although, by now I might have a film credit (-;
I find it very interesting that I always wanted to have a film credit,
to have worked for something creative and meaningful and have my name
put on it, and that now, there is something out there that I have
produced, that will never have my name on it, but will be hopefully so
much more eternally meaningful than any movie could have ever been.
The closest I have is my contribution to Ryan Vs Dorkman II, but they
got my name wrong, it's not JACKSON.
