A Perfect Life

"Dear God, please give Denise and her family more money so they can have a perfect life like we have." - P. Overlander

Sigh.

Heart melting.

Perspective granted.

Remember Rolf and Leisl chirping back and forth about being 16 going on 17 in The Sound of Music? My oldest is 7 going on 17.  She speaks of a boyfriend.  She demands a cell phone.  She begs to wear makeup.

This little girl, anxious as she is to grow up, has always had a heart of gold.  From her delicate way of prefacing criticism with: "I don't want to hurt your feelings, Dad, but..." to "I don't want to hurt other dads' feelings, but you're the best dad ever," she has me wrapped ridiculously tightly around every one of her fingers.

Yet she still floors me from time to time.  Like the night she said her table grace and threw in the above request.

Denise is a little girl from the Philippines that we sponsor through Compassion International.  She's been a remote part of our family for a few years now, sending notes and drawings regularly, occupying our prayers daily.  I've heard my girl pray for her many times.

It's impossible to know the exact image of Denise's family my daughter holds in her heart, but it's clear she understands that Denise's isn't a life of prosperity.

But how can my little girl think ours is a perfect life?  Doesn't she know that most months our bills are greater than our income?  Doesn't she know her dad is lustful of a bigger home, a lake home, a California home?  Doesn't our worn, stained carpet torment her like it does me?  What about our toilet than runs unless we lift the tank lid and wiggle the doohicky connected to the thingamajig?  And don't get me started on our yard.  And kitchen.  And my wardrobe.

Lest I paint myself a materialistic covetous whiner, please know I appreciate my blessings of which there are many.  Too many to count.

But I dwell too often on the have-nots in my life.  We all do.  Except my little 7-year-old.  She has it right.  In this instance, the student has outclassed the teacher by a mile.

My desire to be a professional actor and writer and director and producer is still there and always will be, but if life is already perfect, what more could a career in those fields add?  New carpet?  New shoes?  A steak dinner?

I want to close this entry with a pious spiritual claim that if nothing were to change in my career path I would be content in this already perfect life.  But I can't.  Doggone it, I can't.

Eventually my 7-year-old will tot's be 17 like for realz.  Is that how 17-year-olds talk?  Um probs not.  Anyway, she'll have a new perspective on this 'perfect' life.  Hopefully she's able to find a middle ground between the perfect life she perceived at 7 and whatever melodramatic malady she's burdened with at 17.

At any rate, if the life we live today is perceived as perfect by my 7-year-old, it brings sunshine to my periodic pessimistic pity parties.  And that's close enough to perfect for me.

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.

The Richest Man Who Ever Lived, by Steven K. Scott

"Generosity starts in the heart. It always takes action, and it is never passive." - Steven K. Scott, from The Richest Man Who Ever Lived

I'm always looking for financial advice.  As someone who has never, ever been a member of the affluent or  semi-affluent or even quasi-affluent, I've always had to be careful about handling money.  I'd like to experience a life in which every significant purchase isn't crippling.


So when I got a free copy of The Richest Man Who Ever Lived, I was anxious to learn the secrets to creating a more comfortable lifestyle.  Unfortunately for me, I'm already applying (or at least trying to apply) every suggestion from said book.  I'm sure not rich from a financial stance, but I'm wealthy in more important ways.


Still... I look forward to being both!


For anyone interested, here's a review of the book:


The Richest Man Who Ever Lived is essentially a commentary on the Old Testament Book of Proverbs. That can’t be a bad thing. After all, Proverbs contains moral truths universally applicable regardless of one’s faith or lack thereof.


Despite its title, the book is not a guide for getting rich - at least not financially. While applying author Steven K. Scott’s suggestions can certainly contribute to financial gain, the core objective of the book is to provide a framework for achieving wealth in non-monetary forms.


Some readers may be disappointed that a book about the richest man who ever lived (the Old Testament’s Solomon) is not a get-rich financially guide, but rather a get-rich personally guide. True wealth comes not from the digits in a savings account, but from the peace within one’s heart and mind.


But who wouldn’t want a little more money? The Richest Man Who Ever Lived includes the author’s personal experiences of financial gain and loss, the latter of which was always the result of ignoring Solomon’s advice from the Book of Proverbs. When the author heeded Solomon’s advice, his financial success is, at least as much as the author admits, flawless.


The Richest Man Who Ever Lived is not a get-rich guide, but it will help readers manage their finances and personal and interpersonal habits more effectively.


Read Chapter 1 of The Richest Man Who Ever Lived.


I received this book for free from WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group for this review.

Beyonce, Jay-Z, and… Steinbeck?

“It has always seemed strange to me... the things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest, are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.” – John Steinbeck

It would be unfair of me to place Beyonce Knowles and husband Shawn Carter (better known as Jay-Z, I guess) in either of Steinbeck’s above classifications.  But I’ll do it anyway.  At least partially.

In risk of classifying myself as judgmental I’ll declare the famous newbie parents as greedy.  Any other assumptions would be gut reactions (Shawn’s lyrics certainly paint a picture of a self-loving egotist, but maybe that’s just his Jay-Z character), but I’ve got some numbers to indicate their greed.

According to therichest.org, in 2011 Jay-Z had a net worth of $450 million while Beyonce rang in at $300 million.  Together, that’s 3/4 billion dollars, which is roughly 3/4 billion dollars more than my net worth.

While specific charitable donations are difficult to uncover, I found Beyonce donated $100,000 in 2008 to the Gulf Coast Ike Relief Fund.  She’s also agreed to donate $100,000 annually to a cosmetology center she and her mom opened in 2010.

According to multiple sources, Jay-Z and Sean Combs together donated $1 million to the Red Cross for Hurricane Katrina relief efforts.  Beyond that donation, most of Jay-Z’s philanthropic efforts come through words and a little bit of time.

Let’s give the couple the benefit of the doubt and just prorate Jay-Z’s Red Cross donation and Beyonce’s Gulf Coast Relief Fund donation over five years and even tack on a little extra for good measure.  Let’s say their charitable donations annually are $500,000.  It’s quite clear they’re not, but let’s just say they are.

With estimated collective earnings in 2011 of $72 million (according to therichest.org), their $500,000 charitable donations would be just under 0.7% of their income.

Contrast this with the $600,000 gold rocking horse Jay-Z bought for their new baby and an estimated $900,000 in additional expenses spent on the baby in its first days of life.

My point isn’t that we should give all our money to charity and not spoil our babies at least a little, but come on.  Imagine how many starving children could have lived off the money for that rocking horse.

And I really don’t mean to pick on Beyonce and Shawn.  They’ve both got decent rags to riches tales that I admire.  It’s just a shame their riches have blinded them to what it means to still be in rags.

I’m also aware that their income and charitable donations are not my business.  Honestly, I wish there wasn’t so much easily attainable information like this on the Internet.

Picking on the wealthy is like shooting fish in a barrel for those of us far from their financial fortune.  Does some of my anger come from jealousy?  Sure.  But in this world where people live in cardboard boxes and eat garbage and drink contaminated water, who has the ego to buy a $600,000 gold rocking horse for a baby that can’t tell the difference between gold, plastic, and wood?

This kind of behavior sickens me, but more than anything, it motivates me.  Anyone else want to become rich and famous so we can teach these people the real value of their wealth?  Let’s go.

Impossible

“It’s kind of fun to do the impossible.” – Walt Disney

It shouldn’t have happened.

With just a few hours remaining to secure the last $2000 needed to meet the fundraising goal to get my newest feature film off the ground, it wasn’t looking good.

But as the hours ticked away, a steady stream of new pledges and increased donations tipped the scale in the affirmative direction.  And just like that, the campaign ended with 134 backers contributing 101% of the fundraising goal.

And here’s the kicker… I’ve had people contact me after the Kickstarter campaign ended to ask if it’s too late to contribute.  Kind hearted, generous folks are still showing support.  Thanks be to God for showing that through Him there is no impossible.

I’ve been asked multiple times what it felt like to reach the goal in the manner I reached it.  Was my head still spinning?  Had I come down from the adrenaline high I was on?

Truth be told, the adrenaline was contained and my head was only spinning as it normally does in the hours after school when my kids are hyped up on whatever it is that turns them into monsters that time of day.

With the Kickstarter campaign moving along as slowly as it was the first several weeks, I had resigned to the idea that the ends may not have been as important as the means.  All along, I felt convicted that $8000 was the amount to ask for.  Believe me, I wanted to lower it to make it more attainable, but I had a serenity about me that assured me $8000 was the amount for which to reach.

When it looked unattainable, I assumed God wanted me to go through the process for reasons beyond securing the finances.  Maybe it was the connections I’d make through the campaign or announcing to the public I was going to do this project or just a reminder that I cannot do things on my own.

And it was all those things.

Plus the money.

So I got that going for me.  Which is nice.

Apologies to Bill Murray.

Anyway… I was really at peace with whatever would come about from the whole Kickstarter experience.  Coming up short of the goal would have been a huge setback, but it wouldn’t have killed the project.  Maybe just delayed it a year or two.  As it is, now I’m hopeful I can move into production in the summer of 2013 which was the hope all along.  Still no guarantees, but with money to pay my lawyer and put into marketing and meetings and oh-so-many other expenses, I’m ready to shift into the next gear.

Walt Disney really did accomplish the impossible in his relatively short life in this world.  He may not have attributed his successes to the One I know was responsible, but Disney set a good example nonetheless – go out and DO something.  Don’t wait until somebody else gives you permission.  The more impossible those around you say something is, the more rewarding it will be to prove them all wrong.

At least I know for sure there are 134* people out there who believe I can accomplish the impossible.  I thank God for each and every one of them.

* Though 134 backers are listed on Kickstarter, many of those backers are couples or families, so I know the number of supporters is greater than 134.  Plus, the handful of angels who have given money after the Kickstarter campaign ended.  And there were a few people who found non-monetary ways to show support.  I just thought it sounded good to put a number in that delineation, in spite of the slight manipulation.  Maybe there’s a political career ahead for me…