After working two full days at my new job, it’s easy to see
why some people are so eager to give up on their dreams.
But, once again, I’m getting ahead of myself. I have
officially started work at the Packard Campus in Culpeper, VA, within the
Library of Congress and, just in my first couple days, I’m filled with awe as
well as something a little less awesome, something people these days like to
call the Imposter Syndrome.
First off, I cannot get over every film I come across here.
I took pictures throughout Washington, sure, but I took more pictures of film
reels here in my first day than I did the entire time I was in D.C. I was
always the kind of kid who just liked to browse through video stores, so this
is pretty much the same, except with history. So, naturally, working at a
building where you’ll see an 8mm copy of Ghidorah just sitting at your desk
does excite me a little bit.
However, there’s something about the people here. Nothing
wrong with them at all; on the contrary, it’s my own problems that are getting
in the way. Everybody I’ve met so far is so well-versed in cinema knowledge,
and if they don’t know all about, say, the films of Mario Bava, then they know
technical stuff that is WELL beyond even my capacity of learning.
Therefore, I’m filled with Imposter Syndrome, wandering through
the hallways of this building in a daze, asking myself, “Do I even belong
here?” Everybody seems to know so much more than I do, even the brand new
hires, so why am I even here? Heady, I know, but I think it’s always normal to
question your life choices on your first day on the job.
Which makes sense considering how my entire afternoon was
moving old film cans off one shelf and onto another so I could move even older,
rustier, and sometimes downright nasty film cans onto their own separate shelf.
It took hours. Now wait, you may ask yourself, doesn’t that sound really
tedious and dull? Well, yes. Very much so. That’s not to say I wasn’t excited
when I came across a 16mm print of To Be or Not to Be or Mr. Smith Goes to
Washington.
But that’s what a lot of archiving is, moving cans from one
shelf to another to get things better organized. It led to an evening of pure
exhaustion where all I did was get depressed and watch Space Ghost Coast to
Coast and eat pizza and queso (not necessarily together).
So, no way a blog post was going up last night. I was in no
mood to chat about all my experiences because, not only did I not feel like I
belonged there, but I just was not in the proper mood to be excited about my
job.
Today comes by, though, and my badge to the building still
does not work. I have to sign in as a guest (as if my ego wasn’t already badly
damaged). But today, after sitting down and viewing some old, unidentified
silent films we will be presenting at workshop next weekend, I was officially put
on a project. And, naturally, it’s the stinky stuff.
The project I’ll be assisting with for the next few weeks
involves going through the “vinegar vault,” films that have been damaged over
time due to a chemical process well beyond my understanding (and that end up
smelling like vinegar), and helping to save them in some way. How? I don’t know
just yet. Today was the planning day.
Part of the day was actually spent in the vault, kept at a
brisk 50 degrees (and closed, of course, likely to keep the smell contained),
pulling down various film cans and checking to see how badly they were damaged,
as well as determining which ones were readily available within the Library and
outside the Library.
This was the best part of my two days working here. I was
hanging out in the vault with an awesome guy and we actually got to look at
some of the images, even as we did our best not to screw anything up. We looked at The Sand Pebbles, the original True Grit, Wild in the Streets, Destroy All Monsters!, Bonnie and
Clyde (where I got to see the old Warner Bros. logo on film), I Love You, Alice
B. Toklas, and plenty more (tomorrow, hopefully, we’re going to be looking at
innumerable others, including a few of my all-time favorites).
But no job is not without its tedious portions, and for most
of my day, I sat in front of a computer looking up these movies in a database
and entering information about them into a database. That way, it’s easier to
organize them based on how important it is to restore them soon. It’s a boring
step, but necessary to archiving. As I was doing it, its importance was not
lost on me.
Instead, another feeling came over me. This is what it would
be like to be at any 9-5 office job. The only difference is how amazing the
office I’m working is, and how the work I’m doing now will affect the future of
certain films. But it’s easy to lose track of the big picture when you’re
staring at a computer doing the same three steps for hours on end.
That’s when I thought to myself how easy it must be for
people to give up on their dreams. It’s not because office life is necessarily
alluring, but at the end of these past couple days, I have been exhausted.
Yesterday, because I was hauling film cans around all afternoon, and today
because I stared at a computer until I felt pretty much numb. As I was leaving
the office, I thought about how I barely wanted to do anything tonight.
And I have so many dreams in my head right now that I want
to work on. I have a film I directed that still needs to be edited, I have a
feature script I’ve been sitting on for months that I have not written yet, I
still have not moved into my room here, and I want to keep watching new movies,
constantly educating myself. After a long day at work, I don’t want to do any
of those things.
But why shouldn’t I? I like working at the Library a lot so
far (and I certainly hope I haven’t given off the opposite impression), but
what’s the use of free time if I’m just going to squander it with absolutely
nothing? I’m not going to give up on my dreams just because I’m tired at the
end of a day. I HAVE to keep pushing forward, or I’ll just end up hating
myself.
So, once I finish writing this, I’m going to cook up some
dinner while working on my edit, write more of my feature, hang up my posters
and put away clothes in my room, and maybe even watch a movie that’s new to me
tonight. Because if I’m not going to do all of those things, who will?
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