“If you shoot for the stars and hit the moon, it’s ok. But you’ve got to shoot for something. A lot of people don’t even shoot.”

This quote is saying that if you aim as high as possible, you can still end up hitting something pretty big. The other version is:

“Shoot for the moon and if you miss you will still be among the stars.”

This one is saying to aim for something big and far (but not the biggest or furthest) and you’re bound to hit something large.

The original gives a sense of having a plan, the other sounds like throwing ideas out hoping to strike it rich. So it should be no surprise that the original comes from Confucius and the latter comes from a motivational speaker. When you aim as big as you can, you can hit nice big things along the way, but if you aim big, hoping to hit anything and become a star, then you’re bound for failure. You have to have a plan, especially when you have big goals.

Don’t expect one swing of the bat to get you there

There’s nothing wrong with singles. So don’t step up to your first major league at bat, or even your first AAA at bat for that matter, thinking that all it will take is one swing to hit the longest shot out of a stadium. You’re not going to write the most epic script ever your first time opening Final Draft. You’re probably not going to make the highest grossing film of all time in your first attempt.

That’s not to say you shouldn’t expect a home run. But even if you do, hitting a single home run doesn’t guarantee you a spot in the Hall of Fame. Maybe that night’s highlight reel, but not much else until you produce over many seasons.

My point is, you can’t swing for the fences from the start without appreciating the ability to get a lucky slap single, hit a nice double to the gap, or even be the ultimate team player and take a sacrifice. If you think all or nothing, you’re likely going to end up with nothing.

Know what it takes to have a successful swing

Worse than going for nothing short of a long bomb is doing so without knowing how to swing a bat. You can’t assume that just by reading up on how to swing a bat means you know what you’re doing. This is true even if you think all the other players are swinging it wrong. They’ve still spent countless hours taking batting practice. Sure the theory of your swing may be genuis, but you won’t know until you take a couple of live pitches. When you stand in that batter’s box for the first time, don’t lower your expectations, but respect what it takes to simply get a hit.

There’s no shortcut to the moon.

It’s a long way up there. Further even to the stars. Moving away from baseball analogies and into NASA, think about it this way: we can’t get the stars until we get out of our solar system. We can’t get to Mars until we can comfortably get to the moon. And we couldn’t get to the moon until we could make it out of orbit. There’s a path to greatness. Yes, you should aim for the targets way out there, but have a plan for the steps along the way.

Shooting for the stars doesn’t mean you take one giant whiff after another. It means you have a plan to lofty goals. You need to have the guts to take the chance, but you also have accept that it’s a long process. That’s why it’s not so bad to wind up hitting the moon, when you realize how far away it truly is.

Goodbye Tennant, hello Smith!

David Tennant was my Doctor. Sure, Christopher Eccleston paved the way for the reboot, but I saw most of season 2 before season 1. So I was all about Tennant. I was skeptical heading into series 5 that things would never be the same.

Then Matt Smith made me smile after a tragic regeneration scene to finish the 2009 specials. I tried to stifle the smile, not wanting to appear a traitor to Tennant. It nearly worked, except that the series 5 teaser trailer blew me away. I found myself excited for Doctor Who all over again.

The season premiere episode did a great job of defining the new quirks of the Doctor and companion as well as paying homage to the previous Doctors. It was a strong episode and had the Steven Moffatt flair for adventure that I was hoping to see in the new season. It’s hard to describe how I felt about this season – it was familar, but different. Actually, I guess that wasn’t so hard.

Moffatt appears to go more for entertainment value, less for dramatic epicness the way Russell T Davies did. I love both approaches so it’s hard to choose a favorite, but I do miss some of the moments where Tennant’s Doctor would stand up and save the universe with a wink and a nod. Smith’s Doctor prefers to point out he’s brilliant in smaller doses and is much less cheeky about his actions while saving the universe. Still, he has that Doctor charm.

My favorite episodes, in no particular order:

• The Eleventh Hour – Great intro to the new Doctor and new companion.
• Amy’s Choice – The Doctor holds a mirror up to his darkest side.
• The Hungry Earth – Excellent characters and lots of suspense and adventure.
• Cold Blood – A strong finish becomes tragic with a crazy surprise ending.
• Vincent and the Doctor – One of the most touching episodes of Who I’ve seen. I dare you to not choke up a little at the end.
• The Pandorica Opens – All kinds of epic. Sets up a great finish to the first season of the Matt Smith/Steven Moffatt era.

Of course, there’s things I didn’t like about this season. Sometimes it felt like the ‘science’ aspect of the ‘science-fiction’ was sacrificed in the name of entertainment. A few of the episodes felt a little to rushed, or problems too easily solved, like in “The Beast Below”, “Victory of the Daleks”, and “The Lodger”. And don’t get me started on the finale.

I think paradox’s are fun when used sparingly but I felt the paradox used to get the Doctor out of the Pandorica was a huge cheat. For all the setup of the outstanding previous episode, I was let down by the finale. Strange too, that I had no problem accepting that one word, connected by a psychic link can defeat the Master, but when Amy uses her memory to bring the Doctor back I was disappointed. Maybe the entertainment over science? Maybe the low key epicness? Maybe I’m not fully connected to these characters yet? Maybe a lack of execution? I can’t decided so I’m going to go with all of the above.

Make no mistake, despite my criticisms I loved this season. It has a strangely nostalgic feel. The way so many shots were framed and just the overall vibe of the show feels like a throwback to the older seasons. I’m excited that the mystery of “the silence” wasn’t solved this season and along with the mystery of River Song, will unfold over the course of next season. It’s nice to have a sense of continuity with all these new characters. And one more thing…bow ties are cool!

Him: “So how’s it going?”

All I need - headset, coffee, and a reminder that the job could be much worse.

Me: “Well, I have a job.”

Aaaaand, cringe. Only I didn’t mean it to be rude. It was a sigh of resignation because I had recently returned to a “day job”. The way I meant it was that things weren’t going so hot for the stuff I truly had a passion for. It was one of those moments where I wished I could hit “undo” on the words coming out of my mouth. (side note: my friend is brilliant and has since found a job that is not only better than his previous one, but he found the time to do some amazing writing work and come up with a great concept for a new feature during his time between jobs.)

Being a creative person who needs a day job to make ends meet is tough. Too often, we are labeled by the positions we have. We allow it to define us. But that’s not fair. I can still call myself a writer, even if the only time I’m writing is when I stay up late, get up early, and spend weekend afternoons struggling to get in writing time because I have to work 40 hours a week in a completely unrelated field.

Many times I would doubt myself. I’d hesitate to refer to myself as a filmmaker or a writer because I didn’t feel I had “made it” yet. That is backwards thinking. You don’t need an external measure to decide who you are and what you do. I write, so I’m a writer. I make films, I’m a filmmaker. I recruit financial advisors (which I do well and don’t mind), so I’m also a recruiter. And that’s not the end of the world.

Even if the job you have is your dream job, you eat, sleep, and dream it through other actions. If all I did was write and make movies, eventually I’d run out of things to share. My life would be confined to such a limited scope. I’ve realized that trying to fit work into every waking hour is counterproductive to my goals. So I travel. I play sports when I can. I cook. I read (scripts and books). I try things outside of my comfort zone because when I look back, I almost always tell myself, “yeah, that was worth it.” Even when it’s not worth it, the experience gained becomes hindsight for later stories to tell.

People are more than the work they do. Having a mundane job, an exciting job, or not having a job at all doesn’t determine personal success and satisfaction. There’s a lot more to it than that. Experience. Share. Cringe. Have fun.

This guy knows how to engage.

One of the great things about an iPhone (besides all the awesome apps) is that when you have one, you can always look busy.  Or at least give the appearance of being busy.  Ok, it really doesn’t fool anyone, but when you’re the one standing alone in a corner because you’re incredibly shy it helps give peace of mind.

I used to think this shyness was only the result of preferring the written word to the verbal one, but then I realized I even do it online.  I hesitate to comment on blog posts I read, I retweet people I admire, but don’t make an effort to speak to them directly, and I even keep my blog in it’s own quiet corner.  I don’t promote it, I don’t talk about it, and I’ve just quietly written personal notes here and there without really letting anyone know.

That all is going to change.  I’ve redesigned this site to be a little more organized and speak to an audience.  I really don’t expect the audience to grow beyond its two regular readers on its own either.  That will be the biggest difference.  Too often it’s easy to become passive in life, thinking a break will happen on it’s own.  I forget that things are only going to happen if I actively create my own big breaks.

One of the most important and inspiring things I took away from the (DIY)stribution and Marketing Symposium at the LA Film Festival a few weeks ago was the need to engage – engage an audience, engage other filmmakers, engage anyone who will listen.  It started with Ted Hope’s talk and became a word used several times over the course of the weekend.  It really resonated with me.

So this new launch of my website is the beginning of my attempts to engage.  I’ve got cool categories on my main page, mostly focused on film and writing.  I’ll still throw in the occasional post about the Phoenix Suns or what I’m doing over the weekend, but they won’t even necessarily pop up on the homepage.  I saved some of my favorite posts from the last two years, although I apologize to anyone who’s commented, because I couldn’t save those when I moved to WordPress.

It’s not going to be the little blog in the corner anymore.  I’m going to be more active in engaging in real life and that will give me more experiences that I won’t hesitate to share.  I will make an effort to engage with like-minded people, not just through writing this blog, but through as many outlets as I can find the time for.  No more hiding behind a phone, absentmindedly checking my email every minute.  Nope, I’m going put the phone away…and then continue standing in the corner, but slightly closer to the crowd.  One step at a time.

The interns themselves made the decision easy for me.  At one point during one of our group training sessions, I sat in a classroom while we went one by one talking about what we wanted to be when we grew up.  For more than half the room, the answers ranged from, “I like what I’m doing now” to “I like what my manager is doing.” I left stunned.

“How could so many people be willing to settle for so little?” I thought.

Looking back now, I realize how naïve and arrogant I was.  Keep in mind most of those kids were the first in their families to go to college and most had to buy their first suits to meet the dress code requirements at their internship.  I know I did.  It was a big step just to have the internship for most, and a huge opportunity to have a solid job after college.  Considering the times, anyone who has a well paying job, or any job at all for that matter, has to be happy.

The main thing I’ve learned in the years since is that it’s not so easy being a grownup.  There are serious choices to be made, serious bills to be paid, and different definitions of what makes a happy life.   It’s a lot harder to achieve more than I realized back then.  Those interns that wanted a job that paid well, offered security, and gave them a chance to settle down had the right idea.  Maintaining that alone is hard work, and I applaud them for doing it.  They can be proud of their accomplishments.

But there’s something else I’ve learned.  I’ve learned that to move up one level, say from a family scrapping by to a college grad is one thing, but to move up even further is exponentially more difficult.  It takes a lot of work – more work than most can even imagine.  It also takes a special person.  It often leaves others wondering why someone who is living comfortably can’t just be happy where they are.  Taking a leap of faith into uncharted territory is often simultaneously applauded and mocked.  It’s like watching a person walk a tight rope – you are impressed by their skill and expertise, but wonder why they don’t have a normal job where they’d make more and risk less.

From 2006-2007 only 3.7% of all Master’s degrees were conferred to Latinas (http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=72).  If shooting for that isn’t a leap, I don’t know what is.  Isn’t it enough to be the first from a family to get a Bachelor’s Degree, and find success at a job?  Nope, not for the crazy ones.

I always thought I was a hard worker – juggling multiple jobs to pay the bills while trying to write and make movies.  That is nothing compared to Violet’s work ethic the past two years.  She could stay up later than I could when there was work to be done and wake up earlier than I could when she needed to be somewhere.  No matter the obstacle, whether it was financial or academic, she would plow right through it.

Some people are more determined than others.  They have a will to succeed and are inspiring to watch.  It doesn’t matter where they come from or what their odds are.  They blaze a trail and prove that things can be done, no matter ethnicity, social class, or size.  They don’t settle for moving up a few levels on the mountain – they want to see what it looks from the top.

Violet is one of those people.  She motivates me to work harder and be a better person.  She continues to dispel conventional wisdom, percentages be dammed.    Pepperdine Master of Public Policy Class of 2010, and she’s not stopping there.

There are two reasons I left the first day of the conference feeling a little down.  I will cover one of those reasons when I recap the conference next week.  I’m confident it can redeem itself tomorrow, but basically, I’m a little disappointed by the mainstream, studio-heavy focus of an organization intended for “Independent Producers”.

The second reason relates to it being a conference for Latinos.  This gets into sticky territory for me.  The conference is a place where a majority of people can relax among similar personalities, mixing in Spanglish, or speaking solely Spanish.  There’s always a couple of Spanish jokes told throughout the weekends that I’m left fake chuckling at while wishing I knew what was going on.

The thing is, when I’m in a place where I connect with others, I’m discussing the merits of the 11^th Doctor or complaining about the flaws in the Star Trek reboot.  I don’t know Spanish, but I’m fluent in Geek.

Yet, there is something that I connect with at NALIP.  The films that members produce always inspire me.  Despite the language barrier, I get them, and to a point, they get me.  Because no matter how hard I try – how well spoken and nicely groomed I present myself I still have a Spanish name, dark skin, and poofy Mexican hair.  No amount of PC colorblindness is going to change perceptions I have to work through in the near future.

So I wind up somewhere in between.  I fit in about halfway and sometimes that’s uncomfortable.  But a couple things make me hopeful that this won’t always be the case at NALIP.

1 – Rosetta Stone has definitely helped.  If only I had the time to use it more often.

2 – Passion for films is a common language, whether it’s studio folk or indie producers.

3 – This is an exciting time for Latinos and for Indie Films.  Things are in flux and there’s a huge opportunity to be at the forefront of these changes.  To be one or the other is nice.  To be both is awesome.

It leaves me at a crossroads and makes me wonder exactly what I’m doing and where my focus should be right now.  That may be the reason I felt down today.  As I work tirelessly for projects elsewhere, with a culture and film scene I understand less the more I’m exposed to it, I’m letting a huge opportunity slip by here at home.  It’s an opportunity that I connect with on a personal level and as a filmmaker and writer.  Maybe it’s time for a new direction.  Or, more accurately, maybe it’s time to bring my focus back where it belongs.

Script Frenzy follows the same idea as NaNoWriMo, only the goal is to write an entire screenplay in one month instead of an entire novel.  Difficult for some, easier for me.  Okay, let’s be honest, a script rough draft is easier to spit out than a novel.  There’s less pages in a script and the more white space on your page, the better.  Does that really make it easier?

At first I thought it would.  Then I remembered exactly what I enjoyed about branching out to fiction pieces the last few months.  You can wander more and feel your way around a longer piece.  Nobody flips to page thirty of a novella to see if there’s an act break.  Writing a script requires some form of outlining and structure.

Unfortunately for me, I didn’t get into much outlining.  I’m going to wing it.  I focused more on my new writing playlist than I did on my plot points.  A mistake?  Only time will tell.  I have two characters, a mood, and a few ideas.  And a shade under two hours before April 1 to OUTLINE LIKE CRAZY.  We’ll see what happens.

Why did we do it?  The basic idea was that we want to reduce the amount of meat in our diet.  Don’t get me wrong, I love meat.  LOVE IT.  But we’re making an effort to follow Michael Pollan’s general rule, “Eat food.  Not too much.  Mostly plants.”  Too often, when we don’t have meat available as the centerpiece of a meal, we opt to go out instead of creatively throwing vegetables together to make a dish.

We wanted to try some new vegetarian dishes and get used to less meat.  The first week was a lot of fun.  I made risotto, butternut squash chipotle soup, and eggplant Parmesan.  Violet made an awesome meatless chili with cornbread.  Then I got the new job, we didn’t go grocery shopping over the weekend, and the second week turned into a long craving for our meat on Saturday.

Being a vegetarian requires some thought and prep to have filling food available.  Mixed greens don’t cut it, especially from fast food places I ended up going for lunch in my first week at work.  I didn’t necessarily eat healthier, but I think my stomach adjusted to smaller portions and I realized that a veggie burrito isn’t all that terrible.  We had Indian food multiple times.  It was the easiest place to go with vegetarian food that wasn’t just a salad or mixed vegetables.

Finally, Saturday arrived and my mouth watered imagining the steak I’d be eating at Victor and Gen’s wedding reception (sidenote – awesome wedding.  Had a blast.).  Before the meals, there were appetizers, so my first taste of meat after two weeks was actually some grilled chicken on stick.

It was fantastic.  The first thing I noticed was the texture.  I’d never had an appreciation for the texture of meat.  The flavor was great.  It was like eating a special treat.  And that’s the way we’d like to keep it.  Not only is it healthier, it means we can afford to buy meat that’s organic and all natural.  Our plan is to have higher quality meat only two or three times a week.  We hope this helps in building good habits for better food in general and healthier eating habits.

On a related note, there is a new show out, “Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution”.  It airs Friday nights on ABC.  I turned it on by chance and instantly became hooked.  The basic premise is Jamie’s desire to teach children about food and healthy eating.  You can watch him outline his wish at his TED prize talk here: http://www.ted.com/talks/jamie_oliver.html.

It’s been a while.  I blame my friends.  Click on those links to the right.  Slackers, all of them (except James).  It’s hard to stay motivated to blog when all my friends have let the dust gather around their own blogs.  Granted, my google reader is full of other blogs that I should make a bigger effort to read regularly, but that’s beside the point.

The lesson here, and we can all learn from this, is: never go to Vegas while sick – you’ll lose every time.  Getting a fever down to 99 a few hours before leaving does not qualify as being “healthy”.  So that’s what happened.  I was getting sick and I made matters worse.  I kept working, I went to Vegas, I kept working some more, and then I collapsed for three days straight.  It was the best rest I’ve had in a long time.

That was a week ago.  Since then, I’m healthy again and have a new (old) job.  Yep, I’m recruiting again.  It’s easy, I seem to be good at it, and it’s a real full-time grownup paycheck.  Forget the soul sucking cubicles, I really need that paycheck.  That, and there’s still some cool people who work there that I’ve kept in touch with.  It was like a mini reunion on my first day back.  The old Cutco salesman part of me even enjoys the recruiting.

Not to say film and writing things aren’t happening.  On the contrary, things are progressing forward more now than they ever have.  But those things take time.  A whole lot of time.  Nobody will ever confuse the movie industry with a fast-moving…anything.

Things are moving forward, I have a normal job and a normal schedule to write around in the meantime, and my cough is almost gone.  Not bad for an extended break from blogging.

Finishing any piece of writing is a great thing.  There’s a sense of overwhelming relief and elation, even if it’s something as short as a pilot or a short story.  Page length is not a factor in difficulty of getting word to paper.  The next couple days are an emotional high of satisfaction.

Unfortunately, after that the panic starts to sink in.  What’s the next project going to be?  Is it going to be as good as the one just finished?  What if I can’t even think of a new idea?  That’s one part of it.  The other part is that the writing process might be painful sometimes, but it’s always fulfilling.  There’s an emptiness when a project is complete and it’s no longer with you every day.  It’s a downer.

I thought maybe this time, I could overwhelm myself with other writing.  Dive right in to a new project.  I had plenty to choose from.  But I hadn’t attached myself onto any of them yet.  They were all cool, but I wasn’t excited about any of them.  So I dabbled a little on all of them, not really getting anything done the last few weeks.  I finally accepted the fact that I had to allow some in-between time and also settle on only one new project.  Forcing the issue was only making things take longer.

Trying to convince myself that the period when I was sick a few weeks ago counted as my writing time off fooled nobody.  I’ve settled on the next project (my Doctor Who spec) and finally moved past my period of mourning the ending of my pilot.  It’s full speed ahead, for real this time.

On a side note, I didn’t understand why I felt so sluggish and tired the last two to three weeks even though I was fully healthy.  It wasn’t until I mentioned to Violet that it had been a solid two weeks since I tried to cut back my coffee that I made the connection.  No idea why I hadn’t considered it before.  I’m down to one cup of coffee and maybe one tea a day, which is way down from the 3 plus cups of coffee I was at earlier.  My body is suffering, but I haven’t cracked yet, and I think I’m finally starting to adjust.  I’ll be off my caffeine addiction in no time.