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Day one on the journey to realizing a lifelong dream [1]

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Date: 2022-07-24

Do cameras like this even exist anymore? Sigh. Free images are such a nightmare. I'll get better at this, I promise.

This is a personal blog post. This post will have absolutely nothing to do with my place here at Daily Kos as a staff writer or as an expert in American political elections. I’m treating this as I would have treated my Tumblr in 2019. (Remember Tumblr? Maybe you don’t but let me tell you, she raised me.)

I wish I had gone to film school. It is my biggest regret in life that I did not go to film school. Since I was nine years old, all I wanted was to go to film school. I used to say that all I wanted was to become a film director, but I don’t know how true that was or is anymore. That’s beside the point: what I wanted was to go film school.

I want to business school instead, which except for the parts where I was not taking the business classes (except for MAYBE one class or two) was a royal waste of time and money. I hated every single moment of all the business classes I ever took. It has served me zero. Basic spreadsheet software tutorials teach you more about accounting than all my six semesters of accounting did. I have never met a tax expert who actually knows that much about taxes without the help of Google.

College is a four-year experiment where they teach you how to Google things and you learn on your own how to feed yourself, wash, clothe yourself, and be a decent person. Despite hating business school, I LOVED college. I thrived in all the non-business school-related parts of college. I wish I had gotten to specialize in something I would have remembered and enjoyed. Riddle me entitled.

I’ll be 32 in September. At 22 I became fully autonomous and started making all of my own decisions. I moved to New York City as soon as I possibly could. I worked in theater, I (very briefly) got to freelance doing some admin and production assistant work in documentaries, and although the theater and film industry is noxiously toxic, I got comps (free tickets) to shows and movie events most people don’t even know exist, let alone know they could dream of. It was the most exquisite art education.

At 26, as a result of my anger over the 2016 election, I enrolled in the master’s program I graduated from at Fordham University — a Master’s of Art in Elections and Campaign Management. I fucking loved every second of it.

For the first time in my life, I learned what it was to learn something in an institution where you were genuinely interested in the subjects being taught. I learned I actually wasn’t an idiot, I just had some neurological disorders that needed help and depression exacerbated by a lifetime of being bored and tortured out of my damn mind by subjects that could not have been less interesting to me. (With the exceptions of history, art, debate, English, and politics — go figure.)

I graduated with the highest grades of my life. I got worse grades in elementary school than I did at one of the most prestigious, difficult, and well-regarded institutions. What freedom! I got hired here at Daily Kos during my last semester at graduate school. I struck gold. And now, 23 years after wanting nothing more than to learn about film and filmmaking I still want to go to film school.

Hi, I’m Cara Zelaya, Daily Kos’ content strategist. I am a producer! I make The Downballot every week and helped create The Brief. I am deliciously creative, far too ambitious, and unironically TOO enthusiastic about too many things. I’m also exhaustingly transparent, an over-sharer, and I want to go to film school.

Granted, I am broke. I am so broke. Inflation sucks, I have too much student debt, and frankly, I lack the energy and the time to overwork myself to the point where I won’t be broke. I make a fine salary, but I live in these times on the outskirts of D.C. Can anyone my age who did not inherit generational wealth really say they aren’t broke? I’ve never met that person.

But here I am, telling you too much about myself and asking you to hold me accountable. I’m going to put myself through a self-guided film school and I’m going to take you along for the ride. Maybe you too are a cinephile. Maybe you are inspired as well to follow a life-long dream. Maybe you just like my ramblings. Whatever it may be, join me.

Day one is all about deciding. Tomorrow, I’ll develop my curriculum.

Introduce yourself in the comments. Encourage me. Tell me about your dreams. Tell me about resources I should look into. Tell me about you. I’m all ears.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/7/24/2112305/-Day-one-on-the-journey-to-realizing-a-lifelong-dream

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