Thoughts From The Historical Society

Today I'm trying to be my mother.

By which, I mean, I'm working at the Historical Society in her place during open hours as a favor to the  program manager who didn't want to be left alone. I think it's more that she had a meeting at ten and needed someone to handle visitors while she was busy since, from what I've seen, she's certainly more than capable of running things on her own. At the very least, she's definitely more capable than I am.

This isn't the first time I've had to do this. On Saturdays, the museum's only open from 9:30 to noon, so there tends to not be a huge influx of people. On days when my mother is out and I happen to find myself at home, I'm occasionally asked to fill in. It's not excessively difficult since, again, there's usually not a huge amount of people desperately in need of local historical information at ten in the morning on a Saturday. Every once in a while someone will come in and I'll have to explain to them that the curator is out, and that I'm only marginally well versed in the town's history. More often than not, I end up showing them around the building, handing them a business card, and telling them to come back on Tuesday when my mother will be back.

So far, we've only had one person come in, and he literally knew exactly what he was looking for, where to find it, and how to look through it. All I had to do was stand and ask the program manager if he was allowed in the archives, which he was. Other than that, it's mostly just been me, the laptop, and a cup of Starbucks coffee.

Despite my anxiety about not being able to answer any Exeter, New Hampshire based historical inquiries, it's nice to have something to do. My relatively terrible semester ended in mid-May, and I've been sitting at home waiting around for my house in New York to be ready to move into. It's been nice, since I'm given nearly unlimited time with my friends, who I always miss terribly when I'm at school, but apart from hanging out with them, when they're at work or doing summer homework, I have nothing going on, and it's starting to drive me a bit insane. Despite having to wake up far earlier than I usually do, it was nice to, for a moment, feel like I had a job or something other than TV Tropes to get up for.

I've watched an absurd amount of television. I've started at least four projects. I also turned twenty-one in the middle of all this.

Oh yeah, that's right.  I'm twenty-one now. I suppose, as a personal blogger, I should probably discuss this or something. I did start blogging at the age of fourteen, so I'm come somewhat far with this. I used to update a lot more than I do, of course. I blame social media. My friend Alice got me so addicted to Tumblr that I've been using that as a blog more than my actual blog, which is a problem since I keep getting reminded at school that blogging is a good way to get yourself out there in the professional world, especially in the media business. I can't imagine this blog getting me anywhere, but I have had it in one form or another for several years now, so it deserves a lot more love from me than it's been getting.

Plus, I'm sort of at a loss about that whole "moving ahead with your career" thing. I went into film originally because I wanted to take screenwriting classes. I wasn't sure what, exactly, I wanted to do, but I pretty much wrote myself off as being purely a writer within the world of film. If I did pursue film after college, I wasn't expecting to have a desire to be a director, or operate cameras or anything. I just wanted to tell stories. During my sophomore year, which was my first year as a film student, I operated soley under this principle, and paid almost no attention to the technical or visual side of things. I considered myself nothing more than a writer with an interest in film, and never once thought to consider myself a "filmmaker".

This was all fine and dandy, until sometime this year, that all changed. I'm not sure what it was. Maybe it was from hanging around with cameras more, maybe it was from getting the chance to play around in my experimental class, but at some point this year, I found myself falling deeper in love with the medium of film, and with the idea of shooting and directing. I've always had a thing for cameras, and looking back, it sort of makes sense that I'd find myself getting this interested in film, but I was seriously not expecting it. I've always been a movie person, but I never really thought of it as being something I could actually do, it was always just something I was interested in. At some point in the semester that "interest" turned into a genuine desire to actually pursue it, and as exciting as that is, it's also a bit terrifying.

Because now that I've realized this, now that I know for a fact that, yes, I would like to be a filmmaker and actually do something more than just write, I'm more than a bit behind. There are people in this department who know cameras inside and out, who have wanted and dreamed of being directors their entire lives, and compared to them, I'm just starting out. I have so much to learn it's not even funny, and I'm terrified of not being able to catch up.

Of course, this probably all sounds like fairly ordinary twenty-one-year-old thoughts. I have a feeling I'm supposed to be confused, and just starting out. It will be interesting to see how I feel about all of this in five years. Hell, it will be interesting to see where, exactly, I'll be in five years.

For right now, though, I'm sitting in the Historical Society, which is, ironically, the place I shot my last film. I don't know a great deal of local history, but I can probably tell you where to point an HD camera to make the building look dark and disorienting. At the very least, I can tell you what sort of flashlight you should use when shooting the place in the dark, and which victrola records make the best ambiant music.