Do What You Love

¡Bienvenido!

Welcome to the new site. Take a few minutes to explore. You can expect a variety of content that covers film recommendations, reviews, marathons, and opinion pieces. I especially want to shine a light on women and Latinx filmmakers.

Along with the rest of the internet, I’m trying to channel my creative energy into doing what I love. What is that exactly and why spend time doing it?

Figuring out what you love to do and making time to do it is hard.

I came across an infographic recently that explained artist Katrina McHugh’s journey to discovering her passion. She asked three questions that really struck me.

There are so many obstacles to leaning into the answers to these questions. Finding the time to consider them is hard enough. For most of us, we need to prioritize adulting. You know, making a living wage, paying bills blah blah blah. But how much weight do we give to doing what we love? And how do we find out what we “love” in the first place?

It all seems like quite the luxury.

My path to discovering what I loved doing came during one of the darkest times in my life. Joyful moments were few and far between and they were usually fleeting. There wasn’t much room in my grieving heart for relationships or thoughtful conversations, but it did give me an opportunity to take a step back and consider where my life was headed.

If I was going to push through to the other side of such a painful time, I wanted to be doing something I cared about, so I started entertaining the idea of writing more. Not just any writing. I was already writing copy for web pages and marketing emails. I knew how to write a quippy email headline or punchy social media post at my day job. I wanted to write about something I really loved.

I started devouring books and podcasts about movies and how they’re made. I was fascinated by filmmakers’ creative process. I was swept up by the magic of cinema. I wrote a screenplay (more updates on that later) and started filling in my blindspots by watching classic films and revisiting movies I loved.

Writing about my favorite films turned into contributing my thoughts on film over at Reel World Theology and guesting on the occasional podcast.

Do I always have time to do what I love? No. Do I have to prioritize the adulting stuff in lieu of pursuing my passions? Yeah. But with each passing year I learn a little bit more about what it looks like to be a film critic and make room in my life for what I love. The truth is, enjoying movies is something I loved to do as a kid. I get giddy thinking about film and sometimes I even feel guilty spending my time dissecting films because I enjoy it so much.

I think we could all use more of what we love doing in our lives.