Talent

Man!  It has been ages since I posted anything here.  I have been swamped with school.  I'm working towards becoming a teacher, with one of the main reasons being so I can write screenplays during the summer.


I've heard it said that screenwriting is a great way to make money but a terrible way to make a living.  I actually have no plans of getting rich screenwriting or making a full time career out of it.  I just want to do it because I love it!  In fact, I think the money trap is one of the nasty pits we all tend to fall into.  We all have God given talents but so many of those talents remain dormant because there is a mentality that something is only worth while if it will actually make us a buck.  But whatever happened to that child-like sense of adventure we all had when we were kids that made us willing to do something just for the love of it?  I'm convinced that some of the best musicians, artists, and writers go undiscovered.  But it does not make their work any less meaningful.  I happen to believe that what we do we actually do for an audience of one...our Creator, the One who gave us those talents.  I think the thrill we feel when we engage in what we love doing is actually us sensing His pleasure.


Recently I was looking back on times when I used various talents I have and recalled how satisfied I was.  But when I counted the dollars I made while using those talents it came to a grand total of...zero!  In fact, I have found that when I attempted to use my talents to make a buck, the pursuit of money often mutated what I loved doing into something that I despised.  For example, I've always enjoyed video production.  But I've enjoyed using video to make short movies.  When I attempted to turn my talent into a video production business I found myself hating life as I was shooting and editing corporate videos.  It wasn't that I was just being picky and insisting on doing things my way, rather, it was that creating corporate videos was such a distortion of what I enjoyed doing that it dried up the creative well within me and turned my love for video production into disdain.


That's not to say that we shouldn't use our talents to make a living.  I mean, good grief!  We have to eat and have a roof over our heads.  But I think a job is a job and we shouldn't look at that as being our only outlet for our talents.  I've heard it said that there are two types of people in the workforce: those who live to work and those who work to live.  I happen to fall into the category of work to live.  My philosophy is, "Love what you do, but don't get your identity from it."