Two Horrible Days and the "Why" Question

Two Horrible Days and the “Why” Question

The past two days have not been the highest points in my life. That’s is actually putting it mildly, it was another test in the "trust God or dive head first into the crashing waves" scenario. I’m not yet through it but I think I have chosen the former.

It all started with my plan for the semester. I do a bit of creative writing that turns itself into poetry, scripts and random thoughts. So I decided to focus all that and use the gifts that I have been given in whatever avenue I could find. The first plan was to shoot a short film every weekend or two, so I pulled out an idea I had been toying around with for the past two months, turned it into a mini script, found me some actors and a camera man to boot. I figured that would be my only big project, apart from school work of course, for the next two weeks when I got wind of the Zambian independence celebration and another idea hit me. It hit me during lunch and I was so psyched I completely abandoned lunch to put my idea in recorded form so I wouldn’t lose it. I don’t write things down that much, it requires a mind that is able to stick to one chain of thought for a decent period of time, my mind is not like that, so I record my thoughts then write it down after listening to it and weeding out the wheat from the weeds as it were. Anyway I went to the organizers and they were more than happy for me to jump on board.

I jumped head first into it and got the people I needed to help out, those I could not reach I asked people to reach and I figured we would be all set by the day and time of the shoot. A few things to note, all the people involved were volunteers, which is a problem of its own but I will get to that later. Secondly the time until the shoot was a little under 48 hours. The first hit of bad news came when I called one of the actors in project one, strictly speaking one of the two actors and, and he was going through a couple of issues of his own and so we had to cancel rehearsal. From previous experience I have learnt if you miss the rehearsal before the day of the shoot just cancel the shoot. It’s not worth the disappointment. So I cancelled project one, it was not easy, I was really ready for that one and was really looking forward to putting in a decent shift. So I began to focus on project two, and in order to vent the pent up tension. I did my level best, even worked on flash cards and not just the pen on workbook flash cards, I put in a shift.

Enter problem number two. The camera man showed up on time but without the memory card, after a couple of minutes that felt like and hour we found a memory card only to come back and find out that the camera was flat and would not turn on. Let me mention now that this is not the rant of an angry man and you will see this at the end, for those who think it a rant, skip to the final paragraph. Anyway, we somehow managed to find us a camera and went on location. Apart from those who moved with me everyone else was late. So we made calls and heard stories ranging from I’m on my way to I’m coming down the stairs right now. This is actually quite comical in hindsight. So the first group arrive and I figure we can start with just them, there were supposed to be four groups by the way. So we start, this was almost 20 minutes passed the time we should have started and the sun was no longer were I needed it to be so we made adjustments and soldiered on. A lot of drama happened along the way but I will skip that. We managed to get something on tape, but it was not enough and this was only with the first group, the second, third and fourth had not yet fully arrived. Only the occasional one in most cases none. We even pulled a passer-by or two off the street just to try something but before we could get into position, camera two went flat. And I mean flat, deader than a door nail flat..

We cancelled the shoot and are trying to organize another. As I went back to my room I figured I had enough material to pull the proverbial rabbit out of the hat. I could sugar coat this, in actual fact I cant.. There was no rabbit pulling that day. And everyone seemed satisfied and jolly except me which for those of you who have felt disappointment tends to happen nine out of ten times. I was in a slump till I fell asleep. And the sleep was not all that restful, I'll tell you that.

The new morning brought with it time to go over my recorded ideas, the footage from the previous day and conversations with people who had the capability to encourage. To say the least, his blessings really are new every morning. Out of all that I came out with this… Why was I doing all that I was doing? Was it some form of self-gratification? Was it a chance for me to do something and have people look at it and praise me? Or was it to produce something that would please my father in heaven, the people who asked me to do it, the target audience and myself, in that order. The latter seemed like a more convenient answer. The reality was it was not MY video shoot that did not happen it was THE video shoot that did not happen. I was making something personal that was not even about me. If I kept my eyes on the goal which was to produce something that pleases the four parties mentioned above in their specific order, I would have been able to pick myself up and walk on with my chin up despite the state of my clothes. Unfortunately this is a very hard lesson to learn and it is likely I might have this problem again, hopefully this will help me out then. The good news is the horrible two days are over, who knows what will happen next..