I had a dream once.

I had a dream, and oh! I dreamed it boldly and strongly, and I shouted it into the wind for everyone to hear! And proudly, I proclaimed it, told it to everyone who was willing to listen. With pride in my chest and a thrill in my voice, I called it out:

I’m going to be a filmmaker! I’m going to work in the film industry!

And so I worked, and I plotted, and I networked, and I wrote as much as I could, and I learned my trade and dipped my toes in, and then… then I took the plunge.

When I was in my 20s, I’d worked my usual corporate jobs (Microsoft, Google, the lot), and got myself onto a nice and healthy career path that would have sustained me for 45 years. I would have had a cushy life, with a cushy corner office at some point. Never a CEO, but never struggling to pay my bills, either. I would have been a team lead in two years, a manager in three, and a project manager in five. I would have made my comfortable six figures, and it would have been that. A 9-5 that left no need unmet.

But see… I had a dream once.

And that dream was that by the age of 30, I was going to QUIT that comfortable day job. That pesky, pesky day job. I wasn’t going to enter my 30s still working at my company (that I loved, nonetheless). I was going to be a screenwriter at 30 come hell or high water. A writer of films, a person who dedicates their life to the arts.

My 30th birthday arrived last year in September. And 30 days after my 30th birthday… I was unemployed.

I had quit on a whim and had thrown myself into the deep end.

Only… it wasn’t a deep end. It was the Mariana Trench.

And now? A year on?

There have been highs and lows, and chaos and complete insanity. But how do I tackle the lows? And what do I do when I reach the inevitable rock bottom that makes me think “Ah, sod this… I’m going back to my office job. I give up.”

Planning Ahead

When I first made the decision to quit the day job, there were 2 projects lined up: a feature film and a book. I knew that the film wouldn’t make much (if any) money… in fact, being closely involved would probably cost me more than I earned. It was a zero-budget indie, after all. But hey… it was a feature film that I wrote. Worth something, right?

The book was a guidebook for Irish Screenwriters that is used in colleges here.

In short, there was a plan. I wasn’t going to have any income other than from occasional script doctoring gigs or public speaking engagements. I wasn’t a producer then, and not a director, either. I was a writer with no real credits to her name, trying to make ends meet and put food on the table for my children as a single mom.

But I had a dream, once.

Or so I told myself. Projects aligned, some failed, and some succeeded. I got income through unlikely sources, and then that income faded, too. I was not getting rich, but I wasn’t starving, either. I scraped by, but hey! It was all worth it because I was doing what I loved doing, right? Nothing could replace the feeling of calling this your job. I was in heaven, no matter how hard the work was. No matter how long the hours. I would make it, eventually. Right

And then, all of a sudden… my car broke down.

An expense I could not cover. A theatre project was aligning, and I was going to get that check, but that was weeks away. A bigger check was being negotiated for a project that was to happen in the winter, but the negotiations had stalled.

All the planning had failed. Yes, there was money in my future. But right now, I needed money to get my car fixed. Not next week. Not six months from now when the studio decides to greenlight the next project.

Now.

I could have planned for a million things, but there was never enough to put away to plan for something quite as big as this.

And so what was I supposed to do?

Off to LinkedIn, I went in a panic. I have to get a job - any job! I have to make ends meet, I have to go back to freelance copywriting, but how do I explain this year-long gap in my resume, I have to go work in an office again… I have to I have to I have to…

But no. What I really had to do was take a breath. Because I had forgotten the one thing I promised myself I’d never forget:

I am a Writer.

Look Inside

When I quit the day job, I did so with the naive optimism of any wide-eyed child who sees a stage or cinema screen for the first time. The feeling of awe, the feeling of “I must belong to this world, this is MY world.”

I quit the day job because I knew that no matter what, I would always, always make this work. I had to. I had no other choice.

There was no way I wasn’t going to get out of this. I had gotten out of worse. I had made it this far. I had 3 feature films in the works (one in post, two in preproduction). I had a play that was being rehearsed, another play that had just been commissioned. I had just finished a short, another short was doing a very successful festival run, and a third short was being edited, set to premiere in October. I was doing okay.

How was I going to pay for the car? Somehow.

But was I going to quit and go back to where I had fought myself out of?

No! No.

Yes, the day job was easier. But it wasn’t my life. It was never going to be my life.

The moment I hit rock bottom and thought that the only way for me to go was backward, I realized that backward was never an option. Backward is never on the table.

Chances are you chose this industry for a reason. Whatever that reason may be, you need to take stock of it every once in a while.

My reason for joining this industry was that I had stories to tell. I needed to tell them, and film was the only medium I loved enough to go through hell for. I was going through hell. I was not going to be able to feed my children, rent was going to be delayed.

But I was not going to go backward.

Because I had a dream once. And I shouted it from the rooftops, and now I’ll shout it again. You are a filmmaker.

Don’t forget that.

Even at rock bottom, you are a filmmaker.

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