I just realized (as I write this) that love often coexists with fear (or at least that’s what I feel). For example, I like to hang out outdoor in the coffee shop at night, but I’m also afraid of the possibility of cockroaches suddenly coming to disturb me. Another example, I really enjoyed the process of producing an article, but along with the fear of people’s reaction to what I write.
Especially for the last fear, I think stems from the experience of being verbally bullied by classmates in my middle school. Also, some similar experiences that repeated when I was in high school. Some of those experienced, of course, not only left scars but also fear. The fear of presenting myself in public, the fear of meeting new people, and the fear of people’s reaction to what I do.
The only thing I have been able to do since then and perhaps unconsciously to this day is to try to keep silent by never sharing anything, either what I feel or what I do. I did this as a self-defense mechanism so that they never knew that had actually hurt, a lot. However, I realize and often hear that one way to go further is to accept everything that has happened in the past. And that’s what I’m currently working on. Accepting traumas, fears, failures, and all things become a part of me.
One of these efforts is to enroll and become one of the interns in the Minikino Hybrid Internship for Film Festival Writers 2022 program. Of course, those fears still exist, but their form is no longer as major as it used to be. Fear is only one of many things that helps me to stay humble to accept all differences. One thing I always keep in my head is that all the fears I feel are only in my own head. So of course, when Clarissa Jacobson talks about one of the barriers in her life is her own fear, I can totally relate to what she’s talking about.
Clarissa Jacobson is a speaker who attends regular Thursday night meetings in the Hybrid Internship program. As a writer, producer, and creator of the multi-award-winning, Clarissa explained barriers, especially when she was producing films. As short as I can remember, Clarissa revealed the things that became barriers when making Lunch Ladies (2019). Clarissa said, “Lunch Ladies isn’t an easy film to direct”. Adopting the comedy-horror genre set in a school with a murder scene, location selection was once a barrier in making the short film. With an expressive face and passionate voice, she said she kept trying until she found the location.
Another barrier is your own fear and she tells you to “Surround ourselves with people who support you”. The point I can take from these words is with the support around us, at least it can shed the fears we feel. However, in my opinion, what was great about yesterday’s meeting was that Clarissa claimed some of the things that were present in her production process as barriers, but she didn’t let the barriers get in her way.
Instead, she continues to try by maximizing the resources she has. Time, effort, cost, and everything she did to produce Lunch Ladies. It is also important to note, especially for someone who’s still at the beginning of the field of writing like me, that I’m not drowning in fears that actually exist in my head.
At the end of the session, Clarissa said a sentence that I still remember to this. She said “Don’t get caught up in ‘how’, just show up and do it”. Maybe right now I’m not too confident to say that I’m not stuck in the “how”, but here I’m trying to prove that the fear I’ve felt for a long time didn’t kill me. But instead, I’m on my way to proving that I was able to learn and grow from it.
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