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Living Like Jack Dawson Making It Count


Last week was an awful week for me and I let worry, fear, and dread get to me and it was not pleasant. So this is a brand new week and in a new week I am going to do my best to change my attitude and start living life like Jack Dawson-hopefully with a better ending.

If you wonder what I mean by that, I mean that I will still work hard and do everything in my power to change my life/financial/job situation, but I will adapt his atitude of enjoying every day and taking life as it comes and not freaking out every time things don't go as planned.

In the last 6 years I have been in this situation where a job ends earlier than I thought, or something falls through and it always works out, yet every time it happens fear creeps his ugly head in and starts freaking me out. I am done being afraid. I can't take much more of this, so besides working hard and changing my strategy, I am going to change my attitude and enjoy things more.

This summer I was in Seattle and one week in August I lost two jobs that I was counting on. One was an illustrator job that was going to take me all the way to Christmas and the other was a teaching job-both jobs fell through and I was in Seattle, far away from all my job contacts down here in Los Angeles and I was terrified. I met a friend for lunch and he said to me, "So what? So what if you get evicted? So what? You have good friends, you are smart, it will work out and you'll be alive and healthy." And you know what? I left that lunch feeling inspired. I went and got a day job at Trader Joe's, which I loved, but it didn't even cover the rent. What it did do was get me out of the house and it helped stretch the money I had in the bank until a bigger job came though.

Then I was offered my dream job to create a TV show. Now I thought it was going to be 18-20 weeks of work and then even longer-but the break would hit about then while we pitched. Turns out they decided to break sooner and then we'll go back and then break again. It's still be a great opportunity and I am thankful to have had it, but had I known I would have planned differently-that said, this is an opportunity for me to do something I wasn't otherwise going to have time to do and usually a new opportunity will come up for me in these situations.

Here I go, changing my attitude and living life like Jack Dawson.

"I mean, I got everything I need right here with me. I got air in my lungs, a few blank sheets of paper. I mean, I love waking up in the morning not knowing what's gonna happen or, who I'm gonna meet, where I'm gonna wind up. Just the other night I was sleeping under a bridge and now here I am on the grandest ship in the world having champagne with you fine people. I figure life's a gift and I don't intend on wasting it. You don't know what hand you're gonna get dealt next. You learn to take life as it comes at you... to make each day count."

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