On set and depressed about it...

Okay, so maybe I'm not that depressed.  We've only been in Vancouver for nine days so there's little chance that 'seasonal affect disorder' has kicked in that quick.  We've seen the sun for ten minutes of those nine days, so on the other hand...

That first shot you're looking at has my senior editor in the foreground, my DP in the mid-ground, and one of my hosts in the background--seated.  I'm way at the other end of the B.C Lions (Vancouver's pro football club) locker room (about a hundred feet back) with my telephoto lens braced on a garbage can, shooting without a flash.

A little closer now, my DP (Lindsay George) is tweaking the camera because it's sitting on a sixteen foot section of cam-cat dolly track and the center piece was wobbling a bit.  The laundry bin behind her is raised up a foot and a half off the ground so it'll look good in the shot.  The lockers in the background were dressed by us as it's 'off season' right now so when we arrived everything was empty.
Then Russell Greene (Senior Editor) took my camera and snapped this as I was working with Mark Washington (the host) on his next standup.  The funny thing about the stand-ups is that I write them, sometimes weeks, before we shoot and often under extreme time pressure so I don't typically remember what the heck I wrote.  So I'll take a look, read it over for Mark, and often comment that THAT is one smokin' hot monologue.

My crew will look at me and laugh, 'cause I really shouldn't be giving myself unsolicited props like that.

But the thing is, I really am seeing the content as if it's for the first time.

And that's a point worth making for you.

Whatever is it that you do, so long as you maintain a sense of newness in your approach--meaning it seems fresh and cool to you every time you come back to it--chances are you'll be able to keep doing that thing you do at an increasingly high level for so long as you stay enmeshed in that field.

It was like that for me when I was a Church Planter/Preacher.  Every Sunday was a high.  I looked forward to Sunday all week.  I loved every minute of the service on a good night and most of it on an off one.  Not surprisingly, the 'Sunday Experience' was the highlight of my Church's life during my tenure (and there were other spots that weren't as strong as they shouldn't been because I was less turned on about them and therefore less focused on making them great...).  

Same deal with directing on-set, or hosting, or doing a one-on-one interview for me.  I love every minute of it.  Sure it gets stressful and pressure-packed.  Don't matter none.  All these years later--with the accumulated many hundreds of hours on-set I've wracked up--I still get a 'buzz' off of being in a space that's been turned into something worth watching.

I love tweaking the lighting and setting up the shots.  I love working with actors or being one myself.  I love makeup and costume and blocking and verbally jousting with the boom op and waiting in line for lunch.  

I love it.

And that's why it works.

In all my years doing what I do, the 'love' of a thing is the most consistently glaring absence I find in the lives of people who are less than thrilled with their lot.  And on the flip side, someone who clearly 'loves' what they do almost always rises to the top and, regardless of how high-up in the grand scheme of things their 'top' is, they're almost always deeply contented with their lot.

I can't say it enough.  You must fall in love and stay in love with what you've been called to do and you must keep doing that thing, regardless of the cost.

The other option is seasonal affect disorder all year round, in the sunshine or in the fog and, let's face it, nobody really wants to be S.A.D.

T