Reflection Overload

March 23, 2005 by Dennis Baker 

Yesterday was a day of reflection overload. My great aunt, Velma, had died last week and her memorial service was on Tuesday. We drove up to Madera (30 minutes north of Fresno) to attend. On the drive up I was reflecting over memories I had of her, and things I might say about her. She was the last of a generation that has passed away. Her husband, sister (my grandma), and her brother-in-law had all passed before her. There is one generation less in my family. My moms generation is now the oldest in the family. That was a surreal fact. Moments of spending afternoons with Velma after school were the most vivid memories I had. My grandma died when I was a freshman in high school. Afterwards Velma looked over us after school and I would sit and eat popcorn with her as she watched The Young and the Restless¯. This, and the fact that Velma loved to play with our dimples as children, was what I shared at the funeral.

There was more in my head that I wanted to say: the fact that the memorial service, for me, was much about my grandmother as was for her (due to the fact that there was not one held for my grandmother), also the quote “All Biography is Theology” was something ever present in Velma’s life. But I guess that was not important at the time because I ended without saying either.

After visiting with family and showing my wife family pictures of my family we headed home to celebrate a friend’s birthday over dinner. By the time we got to the restaurant I was pretty out of it, driving for a total of eight hours. During dinner the newly formed tradition of the person sharing things enjoyed, pained experienced, and things learned over the past year began. Once that was completed it was not everybody’s time to share about the person whose birthday was being celebrated. As it started no words were forming as my mind was much from the drive and drained from the day’s experience. As other people finished I opened my mouth knowing that I wanted to say something, but did not know what. As I finished I expressed gratitude to Carissa for the dear friendship she gave to my wife. She had come into my wifeā€™s life at a perfect and much needed time. They found they had much in common and their love for each other grew instantly.

Due to the previous days events it has caused me to reflect on my current state in life. I received my second notification saying I was not accepted into a graduate program, coming from Cal State Long Beach. The first was from Cal Arts. Hope has not fizzled as there are still schools I have not heard from, but my realistic nature has set in and I wonder what will come out of not being accepted into graduate school. I know acting professionally will always be apart of my life, but what will accompany it? I had a small glimpse in what it meant to be a producer with CSI: Sierra Madre. IFP has a producing program I might look into to see if it is something I could also do. I do not want to give up on acting, but I know at this time in my life I can not rely on acting alone and must find other ways to do what I love and still make a living.

While there are aspects of producing I think I might enjoy: having more input in the overall vision and scope of a project and the organizational aspects of the job, I am afraid that I am saying that I am not a good enough actor and I need to do something else. I have begun to see people from schools that were so passionate about acting, start doing other jobs because acting is too hard. I do not want to be one of those people. I do no want to give up. That is why I continue, read more, believe harder, breathe deeper, and persevere.

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