I used to want things from life. Wild and improbable and ambitious things. Equally serious and goofy, like winning an Oscar and then devoting the acceptance speech to the caterer.* Or getting a philosophy PhD just so I can call myself a doctor.

I still want these things.

These ideas keep me up at night with my eyes wide open and a grin on my face. You know when you get an idea and then your mind builds on it further and further, perfecting it, and you fall more and more in love with it? Like when you see a great pair of running shoes and think about where you could run in them and what the weather’s gonna be like and who you’ll be with and how the birds will sing and how many rainbows and reindeer you’ll see on the way? Maybe in grad school you’ll write your thesis on Schopenhauer’s rejection of religion (ok, that’s too broad, but you’ll narrow it down as you go) and there will be a great dive bar walking distance from your apartment and you’ll go there to every night to digest your readings and have a real-life symposium** with your equally-intellectual-yet-down-to-earth grad school friends and you’ll learn German and spend a semester in Berlin and there will also be a great dive bar, although you’ll have to take the S-bahn, but you love the S-bahn, and it is in this dive that you’ll meet a chair of the philosophy department at a local university and that’s how you get your first teaching fellowship, which you’ll only do for a few years because you ultimately want to be a filmmaker and you’ll draw upon your rich scholarly knowledge throughout your long and successful career…. So on and so forth. You get the idea.

But now I get equally excited about different dreams and fantasies

Lately my tangents were more along these lines: if I save up 200 bucks I can get a secured credit card and then build my credit and get a really good credit card in a few years (airline miles! points! cashback!) , and I’ll get a raise/better paying job and put some money aside every month, one part going to a savings account and the other to a high risk/high return investment product–maybe I should consult someone on what the best one is, but that’s money and why spend it if I can just spend a couple sleepless nights doing my own research and then I’ll manage my cash flow really well…but oh god how much are taxes? Success is not to be forgiven. I wonder what the optimal way is to minimize my tax burden, some combination of investing and donating, probably? Maybe I should hire an advisor. After all, “Exile on Main Street,” one of the greatest albums in history, is a direct result of legal tax avoidance. Real rock stars hire brilliant financial advisors–that’s a fact.

I’m not too far removed from the person I was when I didn’t even know what half the words in my previous paragraph meant. Realizing this is scary. Am I a sell-out? Is this settling?

I hope not. I tell myself that as long as I realize it I’m okay. After all, basic financial savvy will let me do the things I want to do. Like pay for grad school. Finance my films. Get a cabin at the mountains and go skiing all the time. Adopt a bunch of cats. More practically, if I am to be a freelancer–one that skies, no less–I should have health insurance and will need to figure out how that works.  As long as I don’t lose sight of that adventurous artist I aspire to be, it’s okay. It’s okay to have money and participate in mainstream society. In fact, I can make that serve my goals.

At least I can  keep telling myself that.

Maybe realizing you can’t fulfill your crazy wild dreams without being able to earn enough for rent and car lease and health insurance is growing up.

But it’s scary. I’m scared shitless I’ll lose sight of myself somewhere down the road. Complacency seems so easy, so attainable, so socially rewarded, so obvious.

During the finals week of my last semester in college I met with one of my favorite professors of the four years for breakfast at a diner. I ordered a beer and he pointed out how “European” that was of me. I joked back that this is probably one of the last times it is socially acceptable for me to drink on a weekday morning. He was genuinely puzzled by this comment. Knowing this professor’s career, I can tell you that if somebody has a handle on balancing the responsible, sensible adult things with being a daring and exploring artist, it’s him. Figuring out this balance for myself is probably going to be a lot harder than occasionally starting a weekday with a beer, but at least it’s a start. Cheers!

 

———–

*And also the grips. This is a real conversation I had during my freshman year while watching the Oscars at the dorms with a friend after a weekend of night shoots. This conversation is very common in film school and professors will sometimes pitch in with things like “I want to help you guys succeed–heck I wanna be thanked in an Oscar speech.”

 

**The word “symposium” comes from the Greek words for “to drink” and “together.” It’s literally a drinking party. You know how if you sit all night with your friends and drink, around drink #6 or 3am, whichever comes first, the conversation turns to politics, religion and/or the meaning of life? That’s a symposium. Literally. Ever wonder about why so much of ancient philosophy is written in dialogue? This is why. The base stone of Western philosophy is a bunch of guys drinking all night and talking about life, the original symposium. Hence Plato’s “Symposium.” I love etymology.