Day 93: Happily Ever After

Day 93. I wake up to the phone ringing. I manage to pick up before it goes to voice mail. It’s my partner. He’s in Ohio shooting. He fills me in on his latest while I try and wake up. I fill him on the good news that I’m starting scene 17 this morning and I only have 23 scenes to go! I have 9 more weeks in my crusade so I need to do 2.555555556 scenes a week.  Seems reasonable.

I realize I have a lot of countdowns going on. I have countdowns within countdowns within countdowns. Clearly, I like countdowns. Time frames. Defined starts, middles and ends. 30 day challenges.  Yearlong experiments.  10-week crusades.  I’m not sure why I dig setting parameters so much but I do. It might have something to do with the fact that I really can’t compute “forever” or “never again” or “for the rest of my life.” I can’t handle not eating sugar for the rest of my life, but not eating it for 365 days doesn’t seem so crazy. I can’t handle working on something forever but working on it for 10 weeks seems doable.

I guess it boils down to the fact that I have to break things up into little bits, smaller chunks in order for my mind to process them. Maybe that’s why I hate fairy tales so much. Living happily ever after is such bullshit. Living happily ever after for 90 days, well, that I can do. And then I can start a new countdown when that’s over.  “The end” is real but forever doesn’t exist.

Until tomorrow, create from what you have…right now.

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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