Film Courage: [What are] your thoughts on work-life balance? Dr. Ken Atchity, Author/Producer: Well if you don't see a difference between
work and life it's hard to figure out how to answer that question but I guess
my basic view of it is that work is what you get to do when you're not living and
so therefore whenever life interrupts work it makes me happy because you know
grandkids are coming this weekend and what could be better but you know if it
weren't for work life would just kind of swallow you up and spit you out at the
end of the day so work is what I do when I you know when I get to and the balance
is simply to let life do what it has to do like the other day of one of my
friend's father died and although I didn't know him I I just decided I had
to go to the to the funeral even though it was the day where I had
you know a couple of pitches at the studios and so on but I just drove out
to to the food to the funeral because that's okay and I didn't think about
work all day and and I didn't complain there is I usually do that I didn't get
any work done that day because once in a while you do have to pay your your
regards to life and recognize that it's there but when I think about how many
people who say they want to work and do work and don't do it and I go what are
you doing they go well life just keeps happening and I don't quite understand
that because that person says the same amount of time that I do and that we all
do and it's matter of choice at a certain point I mean you can I mean we
travel we love to eat out we love to do home things we love to cook we love to
do all the things that people a lot of people like to do but we both you know
my wife and I both work very hard because we love what we do and so I
don't know it's a very interesting question but I
I'd love you to be more specific about what you mean by it
I'm thinking of an interview I heard with Alice Munro and she says she felt
like she had missed out on a lot of life because even though she became a writer
later on in her life I guess she just had spent so much time writing and so
she was gonna finally get to a point where she was going to stop and she
stopped for a year and she went right back to writing so her feeling like
maybe so much of her life had been dedicated to work and then feeling like
she'd missed out on life but then realizing that the work was really the
life I don't know maybe I'm sounding again like my no that's that's exactly
that's exactly the right kind of complication when it comes to asking
that question because the people who love their work the type C personalities
like Alice Munro their life is their work it's like a vocation you know it's
like a calling and if you don't do it you're not living when you're not doing
it you are alive but if you are not doing it on a regular basis and you are
not living your life you're living someone else's life where you're living
you know anyone's life but the artist is somebody who lives their life you know
their own specific life that that she's shaped for herself and and and that's
why it's an interesting question to anybody who's involved in in the
creative affairs because have I ever thought that way and I'm missing out on
life you know maybe for a total of six or seven seconds in my life I thought
that I have had other thoughts like I could be I could spend more time
suffering it's a strange thought right but I had
three sisters and they all stayed in my hometown and I didn't and so they did a
lot of suffering with the family and plenty of occasions for it with 40
relatives around and something was always going on and I felt like I could
really be part of that but then I remember very distinctly that's the
reason that I wanted to leave because I didn't want to be just doing that which
I saw around me as I growing up I thought you know nothing
outside the box is happening here people are just being and there's nothing wrong
with that I'm totally all in favor of you know people and families who are on
the phone all day with the latest persons accident of the latest person
diagnosis of this Ravana and what are we get to do on the plans for this that I
actually love all that stuff and when I'm there I'll be in the kitchen you
know with mostly the women talking about this rather than the men watching a game
on the in the other room I'm torn because I love that but I also
distinctly knew that I had to get away from that that I that they that I
couldn't let that consume me because at the end of the day I always believed
with those people say the one thing that you can't live with at the end of the
day is the things that you might have done
you know the wishing that you had done a lot of stuff that you didn't do I will
never have that problem you know all of my dreams have become plans and and or
movies or books or trips you know they I just always did something about them and
somehow it's all worked out they go to family reunions but I'm not I'm not
gonna stay for four weeks and I'm not being drawn into all that except at the
big moments and maybe it's total selfishness I think there is an element
of selfishness and creativity and selfishness is maybe it's just an
ordinary word for it but there might be more you you've euphemistic words for it
self-determination or something narcissism would be the worst word for
it because there are a lot of narcissists in the creative world who
are mostly unbearable I think but you do have to be willing to be yourself which
a lot of people are not prepared to do a lot of people are nervous when you do it
and try to keep you from doing it because they really wish they could do
it but they don't have the courage to do it because there aren't any there aren't
any railroad tracks that mark it out clearly you know how
are you gonna get to where you're going I don't know well then that's that's
very no don't you think that's very troubling I think it's very exciting
yeah I don't think it's troubling I think it's exciting I think I can do it
and that makes people nervous you know people who are doing their thing in a
continent way a continent of reason traditional way they're nervous when
people are gonna live above a garage and practice you know the drums until
they're famous that makes them nervous and probably well it should I mean if my
own daughter had told me she won to be an actress I would have you know no
please I would try and not have said that directly but I would have had the
same feelings that people have so I think that you you have to be willing to
be yourself and my justification or rationalization for that is that you
know the universe if you believe in any kind of a higher force did create you
and if you're not doing the thing that you're dreaming of doing then you're
failing not just yourself but the whole universe the rest of us too like if
you're a storyteller and that's what you're meant to be and you're not
telling stories because you're afraid of this or that then you failed yourself
you failed your dream and you failed all of us to whom your story might be
life-saving or the funniest story they ever heard and you failed the universe
that created you to dream about telling stories I used to have students who
would have weird things like this I I really want to go to junior year in
Paris but I'm I'm afraid of feeling guilty if I do it and I go why would you
feel guilty well because my parents will have to pay for it and and my my
brothers and sisters didn't get to do that and so I go wait a minute let me
think this through with you you're afraid of guilt
right okay what is guilt what do you mean well it's isn't guilt a kind of
mental thing isn't it kind of imaginary I know it's powerful but it is imaginary
like most powerful in human life right yeah well so isn't
it fear of guilt also imaginary yeah so
either way you're gonna be dealing with an imaginary problem right
you're gonna go to Paris to feel guilty and the path in the future which is
speculative anyway or you're gonna stay here and feel bad for not going so it
seems to me the choice is obvious go there feel guilty if you do and deal
with it and that kind of thinking is what makes somebody decide to break out
of the pack and pursue a creative life if they can't think their way through
that then they just should stay home and you know do the job at the grocery store
or whatever it is that that will make them feel not challenged by that lastly
what about the fear of I think Norman Mailer said fear of mediocrity was
talking about how a lot of colleges train people to want sort of a mediocre
existence I'm not sure if that's true they just maybe stability but then
there's a mediocrity with some of that I know Flannery O'Connor said that the
problem isn't that colleges aren't you know inspiring people to become writers
that the problem is that the colleges are inspiring too many people to become
mediocre writers I'm not sure whether Norman Mailer was influenced by her she
was influenced by him but mediocrity is a is a retroactive judgment it's not
something you strive for right so it's something you if you're talking about
artists he's a meteoric mediocre artists well that's you can't make that judgment
until it's all done in the case of Melville for example you can't even make
it ten because when it was all done he was buried and nobody knew who he was
but then 20 years later he's had become the greatest American novelist so what
that tells you is that the artist can't think about things like that you can't
think about whether you're what you're doing is excellent or not you have to
strive for excellence because if you don't strive for that
you'll never get anywhere near it but you don't judge yourself based on any of
those criteria because that's not your job your job is to do your art and do
that as well as you can at the moment the best you can at the moment and let
the world judge it or not judge it who cares your joy and your mission in life
is to do the creative work and and that's all you have to worry about let
everybody else make up their minds and the fear of doing that I mean the
strength to do that means you've got to have a sufficiently healthy ego not a
huge ego or a little ego which causes people to be egotistic but you have to
have a sufficiently healthy one to truly not care what other people think I once
was getting divorced and you know was worried about my children and you know
what the world would think and everything else and and I was standing
on I'm talking on the phone looking out City of LA I had a million lights right
and my uncle was saying just remember that nobody is really thinking about you
most the time there are some people out there who you know know who you are and
of them there are some who love you and they're probably some who hate you but
most of the people out there don't even know who you are so relax you know and
that is very relaxing is to think that you no matter who you are there are
other people who don't know who you are it constantly amazes me that people
today haven't heard of half the great artists of the past but so what just if
you do something great a focus on that and it will make sense out of the rest
of your existence and that's all anyone can really manage I think is their own
existence
you