AFTER WORKING ON A MOVIE WHILE KEEPING A FULL WORKLOAD, I ADMIT IT’S IMPOSSIBLE TO DO EVERYTHING

A few weeks ago I was interviewed for a podcast. One of the subjects I hit on was saying “yes” to everything, and how it’s afforded me all sorts of cool opportunities. This was fitting, as I was wedging this interview in the middle of a 15-hour day, spending my Saturday catching up on all the work I wasn’t doing during the week because I was working 16 hours per day out of town on a film set. 

I’m a full-time writer, but I always gravitate towards outside opportunities, and I have a lengthy list of jobs that I can always go back to should the chance arise. Whether it’s subbing a class at the climbing gym, taking horseback tours with a local outfitter, or picking up extra shifts at the coffee shop, I always say yes. Last fall, I took a job as a production assistant on a film, which had funneled me into my current gig as a film wrangler on this new feature.

When I accepted the job, I checked myself. The last movie was an exercise in suffering through overcommitment. I was commuting three hours each day, on top of 15-hour days on set. I missed a coffee shift, and I blew a few deadlines. I was waking up at 4am to finish assignments, and photographing gear for reviews while shoving my movie gear into my truck to head to the set for a night shoot, which led to me falling asleep in the bed of my truck in 10-degree weather at 3am. When I took the wrangler job, I told the crew I’d need housing to avoid commuting, and I told the coffee shop I’d be out of commission for the five-week shoot. I didn’t pitch any major features, I turned down assignments that would have required interviews and reporting, and I got ahead on other work. I figured I’d learned from the last movie and I wouldn’t overextend myself. 

But I did overextend myself! Of course I did! I kept ten freelance clients, which equaled about five articles per week. I had to orchestrate and produce content for Backpacking Routes, and I still have a house to take care of and rather drastic lawn care which needed to happen in a narrow weather window, conveniently in the middle of the shoot.

The podcast interview was after the first week of shooting, which had ended up being an 80-hour work week. I rushed home after wrap on Friday, hugged my cat, thanked my roommate profusely for feeding him, then passed out in my dirty jeans. In the morning I sifted through the mail from the week, answered emails, then plugged in for the interview. After the interview I weed treated my lawn then wrote two articles. I decided to deep clean my bathroom for the first time in a year (which obviously had to happen that day), then wrote another article while the Comet worked its magic. I finished the lawn, worked on Backpacking Routes, ran to the ranch store to buy more jeans for the horse job, then finished my final article around 11pm. On Sunday I did chores, responded to editor emails, and outlined my work for the next week before driving back to the set to start work on the movie again the next morning. 

That was Week 1, and I was hammered. I looked at my freelance assignments for the next week and panicked. It was the same workload, but the articles required more focus and some research. I had thought I’d be able to stay semi caught-up during the week, but working 15 hours with horses and actors had me entirely drained. I could barely focus enough to respond to messages at the end of each day, forget put together a coherent sentence. Once again, all of my work got pushed out to the weekend. I saw editor emails pile up, I agreed to an interview with a national outlet that I ended up doing in my truck outside of the corrals, and when the weekend hit, I mainlined espresso and tried to bust out an entire week’s worth of work in 36 hours.

Now entering Week 4, I’ve managed to maintain a passable semblance of home care and freelance writing on top of the movie shoot, but I’ve finally come to terms with the idea that I can’t do everything. When I take a job that requires up to 80 working hours during the week, not only do I have to drop my coffee shifts, but I have to pare down my workload. For somewhat obsessive high achievers like myself, this give-and-take is hard. I want to say yes to everything and not lose anything in the process, even temporarily. There might be enough hours in the week to complete everything I’ve committed to, but that doesn’t leave time for anything else, and the guilt and pressure you feel when you take even a few minutes to relax, because you could be working right now and you have a lot to do.

Moral of the story? On the next movie, my goal is to take the entire shoot off from my normal work. I don’t know if I’ll be successful in that goal, but I do know that I’ll enjoy my time a whole lot more without the crushing guilt of wondering if I can sneak off and crouch behind the jail cell set to update something on Backpacking Routes, or if it’s OSHA-safe to respond to an editor’s email from the back of a horse.

This was originally published in June 2021 with CS Coffee