From the mind of Paul Jones

Well, today is the day… it’s been one year. I can’t believe that I left the life of a well-paid software developer to step out and chase a dream. A year ago, I had the plan to take a three month hiatus from work, write some screenplays and make my first short film. Over those months I had many false starts and complete failures which helped teach me what it really takes to make films professionally and it has been one heck of a journey… lasting nine months longer than planned.

I still haven’t made my first film and have have a trail of unfinished scripts and undeveloped stories that litter the path I have traveled over the last year, but I am so much closer to my dream than I have ever been at any time in my life. “Hurry up and wait,” is what that they said in the Army– a motto frequently relived on nearly every set I’ve been on over the last year. If you want to pursue a life in visual storytelling, it is something you have to be in for the long-haul, something I am having to consider as I recognize the first anniversary of my “creative hiatus,” and look forward at the future.

I have been living mostly on savings I set aside for my hiatus, but that money is now on it’s last leg and soon I will join the ranks of starving artist… now I am forced to ask myself if I am in it for the long haul. I can go back to software development and get paid lots of money for something that sucks the life and joy out of me, or I can take a risk and chase my dream into the dark places. At the moment, my mind is not made up, and the coming days will be filled with weighty considerations.

While I stew on my future, I am preparing to spend Thanksgiving with a bunch of friends that I have known less than a year, they irony is they all have some filmmaking connection to me. As I begin to consider the possibility of stepping, even temporarily, out of my pursuit of a film career, I am saddened. In nearly fifteen years I have not had such a sense of community and the indications of genuine friendship than I do now with the small circle of friends that I have developed over the last year.

I guess this only makes sense, as I have come to believe sincerely that that greatest asset in filmmaking is not what you have, but who you know. Developing friendships and building relationships are somethings that are at the core of this form of art. By it’s nature, it is collaborative and requires the participation of many people that you have to trust in.

I don’t have any idea what the next year holds for me, whether I will chase my dream or abandon it– I don’t think that really matters to me. What has been the greatest pleasure over the last year, has been meeting so many wonderful people, all with their own dreams and ambitions. While I would love to dive deeper into filmmaking I look forward more to the collaborations and relationship-building that are such an important part of the process.

However, I still struggle with my faith and how is meshes with a career in an industry that is filled with Godlessness and self-glory. Regardless of what I “think” about it all, I keep being led by circumstances an opportunities back into the film path. This has caused me to consider how such a career can permit me to “do all to the glory of God,” and I am continually brought back to the focus on relationships in this industry and how little the final film product has to do with it.

At the moment, I simply look to the Lord to open or close doors according to His will. My part in the whole thing is to be a person within whom God is working and speaking. There are many people who believe that the best way to proclaim the gospel is with words and teachings, I personally think that the best way (for me) to preach the gospel, is by living. If we segregate the world into believers and unbelievers we prevent the world from meeting God… God-by-proxy, as I recently described it to a friend.

What better way is there to “do all to the glory of God,” then to represent Him in every corner of life. Why confine the gospel to certain places, methods and situations? I don’t want to compromise who and what I am; I think this is one reason that I want to make my own films and tell my own stories. But until I am doing that, I need to be God-by-proxy while carrying lights, hauling equipment, running the camera and building relationships by genuinely caring about people.

No one can tell me what this next year holds for me, but I look forward to it, partially due to the uncertainty. This thought causes me to remember a quote from Watchman Nee:

If God leads you to walk a way that you know, it will not benefit you as much as if He would lead you to take the way that you do not know. This forces you to have hundreds and thousands of conversations with Him, resulting in a journey that is an everlasting memorial between you and Him.

I look forward to the conversations while on this journey.

November has been a very strange time for me over the last few years, it wasn’t until just now, that I realized how many major events occurred in the month of November over that last five years. I hope this year, it holds something good.

Maybe this November will simply be the first November in a long while that nothing significant happens– after the last five years, even that would be a welcomed change. Perhaps this is the month where all the lessons I have learned over the last five years helps me set sail on a new adventure. If so, I am looking forward to that… four sheets to the wind!