Cereal Suicide

"A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds."- Sir Francis Bacon

The morning was an anomaly.  We had five boxes of cereal open at the same time.  Not a practice I promote since cereals go stale readily in our house.

Enter my 3-year-old.  He's cute as can be - after he's had time to wake up.  But in those first minutes of the new day, he's John McEnroe down 40-love.

If I want my head bitten off, I simply need to offer him suggestions for breakfast.  You see, whatever he chooses to break the fast of night has to be his choice.  My jumping the gun can send him into a ten minute thrashing I'm certain registers on the Richter scale.

With the five cereal choices beckoning from our pantry, he decided he wanted all of them.  Mixed together.  He met my attempt to persuade him otherwise with a look that would send even Napoleon retreating.

Remember soda suicides where you'd mix a bunch of carbonated sugar water together?  This particularly fizzy morning, my son had a cereal suicide.

Corn Flakes.  Raisin Bran.  Grape Nuts.  Quaker Oatmeal Squares.  Froot Loops (actually, it was Tootie Frooties or something like that).  With milk.

Mmm.  What a combination.

And he ate it all.  Afterward, the monster had shed his horns and the angel with the blue eyes emerged.

In many ways I feel like I'm in the middle of a - forgive the analogy - project suicide.  I can't settle on just one attack, so - predictable analogy warning - I'm holding many irons in my fire.

Such is the way of the creative mind.  I need to have Corn Flakes ready if Corn Flakes are the breakfast of choice for the Movieland Monster.  But I need to keep Grape Nuts nearby on the chance that the Tinsel Town Titan craves tasteless crunchy nuggets.  And I'd sure be in trouble if the Hollywood Hooligan demanded Froot Loops but I didn't have any Super Frootie Tootie Circle Wheel Donut Puffs.

If analogy overkill is ever demanded, I'll be a Total success, raking in the Chex.

It's been more than a year since I raised money through Kickstarter to support my efforts to produce my Christian screenplay, Away.  When I launched the campaign, I had hoped I'd be shooting the movie by the summer of 2013, but that isn't going to happen.  Momentum is building finally as the screenplay was a semi-finalist in the Kairos Prize for Spiritually Uplifting Screenplays and was nominated for Best On-Screen Chemistry by the Fresh Voices Screenplay Competition.  If nothing else, I now have validation that it's a quality screenplay.  If that translates to selling the script or securing $1 million investment, we'll be Golden Grahams.  Sorry.  That one snuck out.

On television and movie sets there's an oft spoken phrase: "Hurry up and wait."  The phrase carries weight in every stage of development.  If there wasn't so much down time between contest entries, producer and agent responses, financier leads, and talent courtship, I could find contentment focusing solely on Away.  But I have to keep busy through the down times, too.

So I produced a micro-budget feature that is wrapping in a few days.  I'm developing a television pilot.  I'm putting together a presentation based on Matthew 22:34-40.  I'm helping produce a hunting show.  I'm considering producing a documentary on homelessness.  I go to auditions and act in other projects as opportunity presents itself.  I'm cast in two feature-length movies to be shot within the next several months.  I'm raising my kids.  I'm listening to my wife.  I'm bathing when I can.

Granted, my talk of projects on my pallet carries a little less weight than, say, JJ Abrams or Steven Spielberg's to-do list.  I'm closer to the street-corner derelict with my unsolicited phone calls to industry connections who likely consider changing their numbers each time I harass them.

Still, I wouldn't slow down if I could.  I won't back down even if I should.  We only get one chance to live this life.

This Cinnamon Life.