Late Nights, Long Hours, and Dead Reckoning

Production is blue collar work. There are no set hours. It’s currently 8:30 pm on a Thursday night and I consider this an early evening. Nine to fivers have been home for a few hours already and their wives, husbands, kids, and pets are probably happy to see them. Sometimes, I don’t know why I – or anyone – do what I do for a living. There is no glamour in production. It’s hard work and – after working days, nights, weekends, and holidays; after my back aches, my eyes fog, and the muscles in my finger tips swell, it becomes difficult to remember why, as a child, I thought this would be a great career. It took 10 years to start making good money. It took 10 years to become the series producer of a show. It took 10 years to make it near the top, and the hours I kept as a PA are similar to the hours I keep at a producer. I wonder if it’s ever going to get easier and I highly doubt it will. However, there is still drive to create and this industry allows me to combine multiple skills including thinking, writing, collaborating, and producing. Somewhere, in the back of my cluttered head, the long hours, the frustration, the deadlines, and the dead reckoning are all worth it. As I often think, “this is the job…and I agreed to do it.”