You Work Too Hard

“You work too hard.” The little fractured English voice said. I spun around from messing with a massive 2K Mole Richardson Supersoft. It was a small Spanish woman. I’d seen her around my complex cleaning the different bungalow units. “Huh?”

“You work too hard” she smiled.

I was confused. “Who me? I just do what I do.” She looked confused. English wasn’t her first language. Certainly wasn’t slang. “Yes. You do.” The model was in makeup getting ready. I’d been sweating. But not because of fucking around with the light. I was hung over and a bit sick. I nodded and smiled. It was sweet of her to say so. It dawned on me…what people perceive and what is reality.

To me, as I move around with all my equipment, I seldom realize what is work. I’m way too focused on what’s in front of me to know what people see. To me, it’s just trying to get through the day.

I wonder…what I’m even doing in L.A. a lot of the times. It seems I’m doing what I want. People seem to respond to what I do. It was weird, since I consider the woman who cleans bathrooms to have it infinitely harder than me. I really wonder what people consider hard work. Most people would see working with pretty woman fun. It was really refreshing to know that someone saw the pain that goes behind it. I guess what I’m getting at is when you do something that you feel passionate about, it really doesn’t feel like work.

I came out to L.A. thinking people owed me an audience. I was super arrogant and came out swinging. I was shitty to people. Didn’t care what others thought of me. To a certain extent I still don’t. But it’s a terrible attitude. Not that you have to care about everything or what people say behind your back, but this town has a way of making you feel really self-conscious. That everyone knows your business. It’s damn near impossible for people to know anything about you. Doesn’t help that you have to balance it with internet presence to promote what you do. It’s a weird world. Like you’re constantly online dating. 

You just want to attract the attention of the ones you want attention from. I fucked up somewhere. There was a miniscule line between my time on “Saw” to what could’ve been future work in production. Incidentally, the way things are going cinematographers are about to be extinct. I’ll follow up with my theory in future entries.