This past week was a tough one. I started a project that was long hours and precarious conditions. It was cold and rainy one day in a large muddy field and warm and mild the next in a beautiful pasture. It is a project about war and the effects it has on one man. It is powerful and touching and heart breaking. And exhausting. Not only for the action being played out in the field but for the people behind the scenes that are working so hard to bring that action to life.
I so admire the people I work with and the endurance they have in the craziest of circumstances. It is amazing how we can all work seventeen hours a day in rain, in cold and in mud so thick it pulls your boots off when you try to walk . And then turn around and go out to dinner and share the day with each other. I don’t know many offices where after an eight hour day in a enclosed space they spend precious personal time together.
We film people appear to be a band of gypsies that revel in the fact that the unknown and unexpected are what keep us interested and alive. Of course there can be drama on the other side of the camera but for the most part we know that in order to survive all of this we have to be adaptable.
Some of the most memorable times in my life have been in places where I would never go to either on a vacation or otherwise unless it was for work. But I have been on top of mountains where it was forty below in the snow and on the salt flats where it has been a hundred and eighteen degrees. Inside of stadiums and outside on frozen lakes. Being dumped off on top of a mountain from a helicopter or on a period ship twenty six miles out at sea. I have laughed until I’ve cried and cried until I’ve laugh at the absurdity of it all. I would be lying if I said after all these years that sometimes my body screams for some respite but all in all I think it is what has kept me young in a very profound way.
There are times when I don’t think I have any more juice to give and then my mind finds the endurance to say press on. I’m using more salon pas on my back than I use to and there are times when I would welcome hiking in the middle of the forest with not a care in the world. But then I think of what I have endured and the pleasure it has brought me and what other people endure to just live their life. Whether that be a life threatening illness or a mental illness. God, I am so lucky to be able to have the choice of what I want to endure instead of the adversities that some people have and don’t have the freedom to choose. Their endurance is my inspiration.