You Can Never Water That Career Plant Too Much! (I said)

There's no way around it. We live in a NOW generation. 

We think that we are entitled to living a life of a certain standard and get angry when the plans we have for our careers don't seem to be happening fast enough, if at all.

I'm a culprit of this mentality just as much as the next person.

I've always been one to jump off of the deep end into anything that I do.

I learned to sew by starting on a full medieval dress.

I learned to play piano by working out the fingering for Disney's Sleeping Beauty "Once Upon a Dream" song and then quickly moved into writing stuff of my own.

I started in the film industry by moving out to LA at the age of nineteen....

Not only that, I started by expecting that the month after my internship I would find a great job as an intern or maybe an art PA on films, television shows, music videos... or maybe I might start on commercials for a short while before those doors opened up.

I have carefully planted the seed of my career and have been watering it faithfully a dozen times a day.

Every time I come back to check on my plant I shake my head with a "tsk, tsk" and dump another can of water over it's poor little, limp head.

But I'm realizing that life doesn't work this way.

I'm only nineteen, folks. Big surprise, I don't have my life all together yet! I'm pretty sure I know the general direction that I'm headed with my career, but the path of getting there takes a whole lot of time, effort, and patience (something of which I am lacking).

I was talking with a new, but great friend and mentor that I have made out here who is also letting me intern part time with her in her art studio and she was giving me advice about making it in the industry (as both she and her husband have done a lot of incredible things in the entertainment and art industries). What she told me was: 

1 - I need more training. I'm competing with people out here who have four or six year degrees. 

People might not look much at your diploma in the film industry, but they sure do look at how much experience you have and what work you've done. 

2 - I'm still really young. Most people aren't going to hire a nineteen year old (even if I am almost twenty).... Big shocker. Really, it kind of was. Although it shouldn't have been. I have this mentality that "well, I'm not like other nineteen year olds who just want to party and won't take their career seriously, so of course they want to hire me!" Problem is, no one else knows this. They just see another nineteen year old youngster (or, shoot, even twenty year old youngster) standing next to the older, more mature, more responsible, more experienced options.

3 - I kind of have this thirst for adventure. Since 1 - I need more experience and 2 - I'm still young, why don't I go have some adventures?? My friend told me all about the months that she spent traveling Europe and staying in hostels. She said that I should do something like that, even if just around the U.S. for lack of money....

Boy, do I love the sound of that!

So what should I do?

Part of me still is like "No! This is my one chance at making a life for myself in the industry!" (turn on the faucet and stick the watering can beneath), "I need to get going with my life! I can't stop now to study more" (carry the watering can out to the flower bed) "or just have an adventure–even if it could spark more creative juices for my writing" (dump the water and watch the plant tremble beneath the overbearing weight).

Like that plant, I am still young and frail. I have always thought of myself as so strong, able to handle hard circumstances. But I'm not. I'm only as strong as the circumstances that I've been through have made me, and to be honest, compared to a lot of people I have lived a very sheltered life.

Yes, God has given me all of the tools that I have needed to keep strong and grounded in Him up to this point. But I feel that the difficulties and trials are about to get exponentially bigger. Maybe it's now that God wants to provide me with the next set of tools that I need to build a firmer foundation in Him.

Lord only knows.

Assr vísa ykkarr brand.

(May God guide your sword.)

Elizabeth Marie Kauffman

My first Vlog in LA

Set Adrift Far From Shore

When I was a little girl–about four, five, six–I didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew up.

Whenever my older sister exclaimed with deep determination that when she grew up she would be "a missionary and a mommy" I would crinkle up my little girl forehead and ask myself what I wanted to be when I grew up. I could say the same thing, because that was all I really knew, or I could just shrug and turn my childish mind to other "more important things" for the time being.

By the time I reached the age that it started to feel more important that I "know" what I was going to be when I grew up, I knew exactly what that was.... I was going to be a singer/songwriter.

I grew even older and my list grew to include not only being a singer, but also being a horse trainer, a hippo-therapist, a photographer, and on occasions I would get a little crazy and desire to be a runner, a gymnast, or a shepherdess.

Around the end of my elementary years singing dropped off the list and I added being a writer–something that I had always loved doing, but had never thought of myself as.

Middle school brought with it a deep, burning passion for acting and making films.

Everything else fell away.

I still loved horses and working with animals. I still really liked the idea of being a photographer and traveling the world to seek out all sorts of rare animal species to capture on film. But I "knew" my calling, and it was to go work in Hollywood and to write novels on the side for fun.

Since the age of twelve I have been headed in this direction. I have dreamed over and over and over what it would be like when I would finally get a chance to move out to LA and begin work in the industry that I loved and was passionate for.

It would be hard, but God would lead me and would open the right doors as I needed them.

And He has done just that very faithfully!

Fast forward to today.

Here I am...

In LA.

On my internship.

Looking for a job.

...

Trying to figure out where in the world I am headed.

I have two months of an office-type internship.

Then what?

I thought that I knew what I wanted.

I thought I knew exactly what direction I needed to keep my heading in.

Now that I'm out here, I don't know what that heading is. What it should be. I'm not sure that the exact direction that I have been aiming at–become an art director and write on the side–is what is right.

In the picture at the top of this blogpost you can see a ball of clay that I'm holding. I got this from the church that I visited this last Sunday. It was meant as a reminder that "our lives are an art form for us to create," to ask myself "what am I creating with my life?" and that "each day God is inviting us to join Him into making something beautiful out of our lives."

I hold my life–an unformed lump of clay–in my hand, but what am I to make it into? What am I going to shape it into? Will it be beautiful or mediocre?

For the first time in my life since I was four, five, or six, I don't know where I am headed. 

Sure, there's been moments throughout my life when I have doubted and questioned my course, but I always had some sort of direction, or just two options to choose from. This time I don't have the freedom to just wrinkle my brow, shrug my shoulders, and turn to "more important" things for the time being.... Now, I have the whole world of adulthood laid out in front of me like sculpting tools.

What do I grab?

What is the end result that I want?

I hope that next time I write a post I will have the answer that I'm looking for....

Assr vísa ykkarr brand.

(May God guide your sword)

Elizabeth Marie Kauffman