Day 34: Duh. Break it up!

Day 34.  After breakfast, I walk into my office and fire up the Avid.  I had a breakthrough over my gluten free English muffin and juice on how to approach the string out of scene 10!  I’m excited.  Scene 10 has had me stumped for a couple weeks.  I keep leaving it and coming back to it.  Now I realize it’s so simple.  It’s something I already know and probably do unconsciously most of the time but for some reason it feels like a revelation this morning:  stop thinking of it in the big picture—break it up.  I just have to do one small section at a time and eventually I’ll have a full string out that Dan the amazing editor man can turn into something brilliant.

As I open the doc project, I pick up my iPhone.  I see I have a VM, a text and some new emails.  I clocked out last night after a good 10 hours editing and I didn’t have enough gas left to plug into any real or technological communication.  I mindlessly watched a rerun of How I Met Your Mother then wrote in my journal…well, sort of.  I was a little like Jack Nicholson in The Shining with “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”  I wasn’t quite so creepy or crazy just exhausted.  Over and over I wrote, “one day at a time.”  I wrote it in my journal, sang the song written by Marijohn Wilkins and Kris Kristofferson that I grew up hearing my sister Lori sing (or maybe it was my brother Bill?  Or both?)…

And I continued to say, “one day at a time” out loud to myself until I passed out.  (Surprisingly, the sitcom One Day at a Time with Bonnie Franklin that I watched religiously in my youth never entered my mind last night.  But now it has.  Wish me luck getting that sticky theme song out of my head.)  At the end of the day, even if I’ve gotten the day’s work done, I tend to feel overwhelmed because there’s still so much left to do.  But now I know.  Break it up.  That’s all I can do.  I just have to take it one day at a time.  Eventually they’ll add up to the whole year and hopefully, I’ll have created something by the time I get there.

I click on the text.  It’s from one of my best friends.  She’s replied to the text I sent her replying to her text asking me how I was.  I had texted her saying, “I’m starting to think we can finally finish this ‘expletive’ documentary this year…but I don’t want to jinx it.  LOL.  Still so much to do.  Just keeping my nose to the grindstone…”  This morning she’s texted me back, “I know you can do it.  I know you can.  Like you said…One day at a time.”  I get chills.  I’m pretty sure I haven’t talked to her in almost two weeks.  Then I think, I must have written that in one of my texts to her.  I check.  Nope.  She’s a bit “touched” if you know what I’m saying.  Now that’s some serious thinking outside the box inside the box!  I love it!  Who needs technology?  We’re all connected even without it.  And now it’s time for me to think outside the box inside the box and create from what I have right now—just one day’s worth.  That’s right.  I’m breaking it up!  I even think I can kick me some scene 10 ass now.

Until tomorrow, create from what you have…one day at a time.

Kelli Joan Bennett is a filmmaker, actress, writer, entrepreneur, advocate for creative thinking and Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Think Outside The Box Inside The Box Media.

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