The School of Life

This is J-Street Shelter. Recently, we had the good fortune of providing bed frames to our clients. We care for between 100 and 200 people daily, as they sleep within feet of each other. We provide a blanket and a sheet, along with one hot meal and a shower, during the mornings and evenings. Tragically, our town's mayor has decided that we no longer have the funding to care for this clientele, and the shelter will be closing at the end of August.

For the last year, I have been working at my local homeless shelter. My last shift was this previous weekend. In all honesty, I've never worked for a more worthy cause. The daily experiences of working with the unhoused have been one of the most humbling experiences of my life. I've had the pleasure of getting to know dozens and dozens of people. Their experiences inspire me and fuel my passions as a storyteller. Indeed, I've tried to use this experience as its own school, writing countless notes about my interactions and observations with this wide range of clientele.

The outcasts of our society have always been more relatable to me. From my very first job working in assisted needs, to being a primary counselor for kids from abused and neglected backgrounds, to this most recent venture working with the unhoused, there is simply something about these populations that feeds me.

Every artist has a fire within them. And what keeps the flame alive is personal experiences. This is the extraordinary beauty of art. We get so distracted by searching for the current hot topic and utilizing the newest technology. Yet, storytelling is as old as time, and the stories that endure are driven by their observations of human nature.

We live in a culture of instant gratification. Most social media platforms rely on dopamine highs from endless video scrolls or an algorithm that provides us with points of view we are already in line with or ones designed to outrage us. There are so many facades in this world, and I've found the work I've pursued to be my best fight against these fabrications. When people are struggling with massive trauma, physical and mental barriers, and the basic needs of finding a place to sleep and food to eat, they just don't have much room to put on a mask. What one gets instead are genuine interactions with people who required me to search for and acknowledge their worth.

Countless things bring people to storytelling. My draw, the films that keep me coming back, are the ones that examine the worth of a person. The primary goal for all my jobs was to determine how to recognize and acknowledge an individual's worth. Sometimes their worthiness was difficult for me to see. But what always got me closer was the personal interactions and advocacies. Whether it's bathing someone who can't care for themselves, speaking with a child's teacher to advocate for their strengths, or simply having a personal conversation with a client whose grasp on reality is tenuous, all these experiences have provided profound lessons on the essence of human nature.

This next chapter for me is a more traditional one when it comes to making movies. I will be participating in the AFI Screenwriting Program, living in Los Angeles, and trying to establish myself as a filmmaker. The assisted living industry is significantly underfunded, and burnout is a constant challenge to avoid. However, there is no experience like working with the most vulnerable of our society. They have a perspective that so many of us take for granted. People experiencing homelessness, people with disabilities, and the fatherless have been my teachers over the past fifteen years, and what they have gifted me, by allowing me to be witness to their most vulnerable moments, is foundational to my success in the future.