Pulling Focus

There's a saying, "jack of all trades, master of none." I've never found this to be completely true and I've never felt it was the right way to look at our talents. The ability to do many skills does not imply that one isn't fully accomplished in one of them. Lady Gaga isn't a lesser actor because she's an incredible singer. What I'm more concerned about is finding the trifecta i.e. something that I'm good at, enjoy doing and that makes money. Okay the last one can be ignored I've never been one to chase money but it's a consideration nonetheless.

Looking back at my pursuit in my passions, I realise I've grown less sure of what my trifecta will be the closer I get to crossing that bridge. When I was in secondary 1, one of the assignments I got was to film a commercial for a made up talent show for my secondary school (you can see how my humour has not changed here). From then on I was in love with making videos. I was dead set on being in the film industry. I bought my first DSLR and by sec 2 I had made a short film, albeit absolutely terrible (binge that cringe here, still not taken down despite the Linkin Park background music Taufiq - 1, Youtube - 0). By sec 3 my heart was set on Film Sound & Video in Ngee Ann Poly. I entered through the early admission exercise and did not even flinch at the thought I had committed the next 3.5 years of my life to filmmaking. My dream was to make my own feature film.

Skip ahead to the end of year 1 and I had a problem, I hated being on set. For the unacquainted, being on set is the part of the filmmaking process that involves actual filming. My first experience making a film, my final project for my first semester, was bar none the single most stressful moment of my life. I was the director, working with a team of 4 other dudes so mismatched I'm surprised we didn't physically repel each other through some innate law of the universe that forbade us to contact. Among other stressful problems we hired a makeup artist who, due to schedule changes, was not needed that day, we were kicked out of our first location which cost us hours of shoot, our actress did not bring the right clothes, we were running way over-schedule and the person to whom all eyes darted to was me. I was inches away from breaking down and from then on a deeply rooted phobia of being on set grew. I decided I never wanted roles that involved being on set again.

Come year 2 and I realised that more than just hating being on set, I was bad at it. I couldn't grip (the people that rig stuff), gaff (the people that light stuff) or any mixture of the two (I dub it: giraffe). So i took on writing and editing roles, so far so good. After working on a documentary module, I realised I loved making non-fiction films way more than narrative short films. So my dream tweaked, I wanted to either make my own feature-length documentary or be a camera-man for a wildlife show. I just love animals on camera.

As the semester came and went and the second semester began, all motivation was gone. I realised I wanted to write. Writing scripts was fine but my real passion was probably in article writing or blog-writing, the main motivation behind this blog was as a portfolio for the future. My main gripe was that I just don't fit in with the people in the film industry. There's a disconnect between my vibe and my classmates, lecturers, seniors and juniors in my course. Literally all my friends that I hang out with on a daily basis are from the sister mass communications course to which I wished had dawned upon me earlier to join. In essence not much about my course is currently relevant to what I aim to pursue. To add on to the smorgasbord, my intern will be at a radio station where I will be working in the radio capacity, a job which I am completely unqualified to do and that excites me. I do hope to find an untrodden avenue as a host/radio jock/podcaster because I've always loved talking in general and with an over-saturated vocabulary I'm sure I'd be the floweriest of them all.

What I've come to realise is that I am that jack of all trades. I do like talking, writing, camera operating not to mention all things music including composing, singing and guitar playing. People say it's okay to be undecided on your career path even once you've graduated. A wise lecturer once told me that going for a course to learn only what you don't want to do is just as valid as learning what you do. All that's really lost is perhaps an opportunity cost which is trivial, un-pivotal though non-convivial (the flowery language is to feed my fragile ego). Yet I don't think that's my problem. The problem isn't that no avenue appeals to me, it's that all of them do and yet I am unmotivated to take a step. There was a study showing that when presented with either 30 or just 6 choices of jam, those presented with just 6 were more likely to end up purchasing one. I am a customer who totally wanted jam, demanded apricot jam (who the hell buys apricot jam anyway?), was delivered Apricot jam and then immediately realised that I wanted peanut butter. I palm my face in anguish as I realise I had just walked into the store selling only jam when the store selling peanut butter, where all my friends went, was next to it all along.

I lack focus. I really lack focus. I've stopped putting effort into my course and yet I'm not devoting the leftover energy into pursuing something I do want to do. I struggle to find focus in life and in the small things I do. 9 out of 10 times when I pick up a book, I don't finish it. When I start a game, I don't finish it. When I start watching a series, I don't finish it. When I play Mortal Kombat I ABSOLUTELY WILL FINISH HIM. In the articles I write I have great difficulty choosing a topic to write on and I sense no consistency in my articles. Some come naturally, others aren't worth writing and others still are way sillier and unpretentious than they should be. What is a blog without personal branding? My life is basically neither here nor there in many ways, I walk the middle road in all the wrong ways and even Buddha would be conflicted. I fear for the future. Will I still put half my heart into every endeavour whether I want to or not? Will I find my trifecta and will I lose passion?

I find myself making excuses. It's natural not to know what to do, passion is developed not found, but I found my passion long ago and lost it, what would change about a new passion? I did a test on sociopathy and found that I was likely sociopathic and I might tend to not follow through with plans as a result. I resorted to classifying myself as mentally ill to explain away my lack of focus. Don't we all make excuses though?

A focus puller is someone who is in charge of turning the focus ring on the lens of the camera so that the lens focuses on the subject. Right now there are too many things in the frame to focus on and so the puller racks back and forth, never committing to a subject. All we can do is wait until the frame changes or the director makes up his mind on what the subject is.