Passion & Paying The Bills: Living A Life of Meaning & Joy

Today, the story of marrying passion and paying the bills. This is my story, the steps I took (and didn’t), what worked (and didn’t), what I learned along the way (and am still learning). I invite you into this journey with me. Take notice of what resonates with you, take notice of the places you find tension, pick what works, and ditch what doesn’t. The goal is not for you to follow in my footsteps but to find your own steady footing. And if my stumbles and strides can be useful to you along the way, excellent. Off we go.

Confession: I have never had an internship

As a film student, “the thing you do” is take an internship at an agency or production company. You spend hours every day writing “coverage.”¹  You burn through dozens of scripts it’s week. Most of them are crappy. It’s mind-numbing. I’ve not met a person who enjoyed doing coverage (and for free!).

Instead, my second semester of college, I started volunteering at our college television station. By my sophomore year I was getting paid to work on professional shoots. My junior year? I was a manager. My last semester in college, ION Media Networks contracted us and hired me to produce a pilot for their network. I ended up making more money than the station’s General Manager.

 

If you’re familiar with my work, you know what comes next: I graduated a semester early and spent the time on the second Soulforce Equality Ride, criss-crossing the country visiting the most anti-LGBT places in the country (secret: one of those places is located in Malibu, CA, another is in Seattle, WA; so much for urban, accepting utopias).

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