Homeless or Homefree?: Day 13
1.23.15
Day 13
Before I know it, this whole thing is over. Sitting at a white plastic table with Justin, Bucky, and Mijon. We’ve just finished day 4 of camp. Tomorrow we send another crop of teens back into the wild. I did a lot of interviews today, about 13 kids in total. Greg accuses me of only interviewing the best looking kids but I think he’s just giving me a hard time. A lot of it is choosing the kids that have the best English and are the most likely to have a clairvoyant moment on the camera.
You can’t train people to be charismatic. For whatever reason, in the hundreds of interviews I’ve done, there have only been a handful of people that have sat in front of the camera and made an audience out of me. I’m usually the director and a critical one at that. I got the chills twice today. Once when the 11 year old astrology master sat and told me the importance of teamwork and another time when a 14 year old girl, the teenager that is developing before her friends and will be pretty and will have to make the choice if she wants to be authentic or be the girl that everyone likes, told me that she wears masks around her friends because she wants them to like her and that she just wants to stop being self-conscious and start being herself.
Good stuff kids.
I give Justin a hard time sometimes and I’m not sure if he knows how much I respect him so I interviewed 6 of his students tonight and asked them things they loved and admired about him. We did a little skit too. Justin has no idea and I’m hoping he really likes it because he cares about these kids more than most and it’s very cool to experience.
150 days on the road last year, approximately. I haven’t had an apartment in almost a year. Been floating between friends, airbnb, and my office. People ask me what I miss the most when I’m on the road. I miss my friends. I have good friends and I’ve never felt like that since I moved to California. I miss the sun as well. I like when it’s on my face and I am looking at the ocean, able to take a deep breath and feel small.
I miss walking around my neighborhood and policing the homeless, grabbing juice, and listening to new emo songs on my headphones.
Sometimes I don’t miss anything. And that’s what really scares me. Sometimes I get to a new city and check into my hotel room, throw my bags on the bed, take a dump, and scream in the mirror because I couldn’t be happier.
Long-term, I don’t know what my play is going to be. There have been benefits from staying grounded and interfacing with the same people and work for extended periods of time, I’m growing up because of it, facing personal challenges and character flaws. But I love to travel. I love new projects and I love hotel rooms. I can shower, plow through a container of shampoo, dry my bizzles with the towel, leave it on the floor, have a quick nap, head down for buffet, take a walk to buy sunglasses and a SIM card, come back to my room and smile at the stack of brand new towels and turned down sheets.
How do you choose?
Don’t say you can have both. I hate moderation.
