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Welcome to Stuff I Learned Yesterday. My name is Faith McQuinn, I recently took a bubble bath using an artichoke as a loofah and shared a photograph of it with the world, and I believe that if you aren’t learning, you aren’t living. In today’s episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday, I share a lesson I learned from leaving my comfort zone.
But before we get to that, here’s my Fun Fact of the day and the reason why I took a bath with an artichoke. Every year, at the end of July, GISHWHES happens. What’s that? GISHWHES stands for the Greatest International Scavenger Hunt the World Has Ever Seen. It was started by Supernatural star Misha Collins. Thousands of participants from more than 100 countries build their own teams with friends or are placed on 15-person team and for one week, they complete crazy and amazing tasks on scavenger hunt list. Past items have included The winning team gets to go a cool vacation with Misha. Some of the past items have included: dress up as a Stormtrooper and go get a manicure; make a dress out of cheese; visit a children’s hospital, and put on a puppet show; find a homeless person, and buy them a meal; make a painting out of junk food; find a bonafide astronaut and get him or her to play airplane with you. You get the picture.
The winning team gets to go on a fun vacation with Misha. Past winners have gone to Rome, a castle in Scotland, an island off the coast of British Columbia, a pirate ship in Croatia, and a volcano in Costa Rica. This year the Winning Team will be joining Misha Collins and in Iceland for dog sledding on a glacier, partying inside a volcano, and thermal hot spring shenanigans. But most people don’t do the hunt to win. They do the hunt because it pushes limits and gets people out doing acts of kindness in their community and around the world. All the proceeds from the entry fees go to Random Acts, a non-profit organization dedicated to funding and inspiring acts of kindness around the world. GISHWHES has broken world records and helped refugee families, brought clean water to third world villages, helped register people to vote, and a ton of other amazing things. So you should join the hunt next summer, and then you’ll have a great story to share on the Friday Forum!
What I Learned Yesterday
A couple of weeks ago, I found myself driving to The Frothy Monkey, a coffee shop in Nashville I’d never visited before. I was meeting Sarah, a film producer who had invited me to coffee via private message on Facebook. Sarah and I had spoken on twitter once but had never met in person. In fact, she came across my name by doing a search n Twitter for women filmmakers in Nashville.
On this particular day, a Wednesday, I was feeling a little under the weather. And Wednesdays are usually mod down days. I teach all day on Tuesday, so I take a break and then pick back up with projects and grading on thursday. this Wednesday was also the first with my daughters back in school. I was perfectly content to sit on the couch in my quiet house watching some Orphan Black. Sarah messaged me a couple of hours before our meeting, and I was very close to cancelling. But I didn’t. I picked myself up off the couch (with a little bit of whining involved), got dressed, and left for the Frothy Monkey.
After finding a place to park, I found Sarah sitting at a table near the back. As is usual with me, the conversation started off awkwardly. We exchanged pleasantries and ordered coffee and muffins. But soon we found ourselves talking about what we both loved—films and filmmaking.
I found out that Sarah worked for the Citizen Jane Festival—a film festival for women filmmakers in which I had entered my short film. I also learned that she’s a member of the Nashville Film Guild, a rather new group in Nashville I’d heard about. She invited me to their member get-together next month and also asked if I had any scripts to submit to their monthly table reads. As a producer, she’s produced shorts and a couple of features with budgets up to $50,000. she also has a strong interest in helping directors raise money via crowdfunding. In short, she is a great person for me to know. After the meeting, I texted my husband and told him how awesome she was and all the new opportunities she’d opened up. “Good thing you left the house,” he typed back. Yes. Yes it definitely was.
This wasn’t the first time I’d been pleasantly surprised by something I initially didn’t want to do. In frebruary, I joined a team for the 54 Hour Film Festival, a local contest that gives teams a surprise genre, line of dialogue, and object to put into a film that’s written, shot, and editing in 54 hours. I was the team’s writer. The team was mostly made up of former students, so even though it was my first time doing the festival, I was working with people I knew and have with worked with in the past.
In July, I was asked to be a part of three different teams for the 48 Hr Film Festival. The 48 is much like the 54, but it is international, has a few more restrictions, and is—of course—six hours shorter. One team was filled with fellow faculty members. One team was lead by an actor friend of mine. And the last team was filled with production people I had never met before. I went with the last team because a) I would get to write again (They were the only team that asked me to be a writer), and b) meeting more filmmakers is always a good thing.
I don’t normally do things like this. I don’t like working on projects with such a little amount of time, and I’m really nervous around people I’ve never met, especially when I’m expected to be creative. But in all three of these situations, I had fun, made new friends, expanded my professional connections, and pushed myself creatively.
Here’s What I Learned:
Staying comfortable won’t help me be a better filmmaker. People constantly talk about “stepping outside” of their comfort zone. Doing this helps you grow. And though I think this is a good thing, I don’t think the wording is exactly right. Film producer Brian Grazer said this on All Things Considered: “Disrupting my comfort zone, bombarding myself with challenging people and situations—this is the best way to keep growing.” To “disrupt” means to destroy or drastically alter the structure of something. Why would I simply step out of my comfort zone? Why not alter it, expand it, completely deconstruct it instead? You never know what could come of it. Maybe you make new professional connections. Maybe you make new friends. Maybe you open up new opportunities. Heck, maybe you fall flat on your face. But whether your disruption was successful or not, it happened. And now you, and your comfort zone, are forever changed.
I’m Faith McQuinn, and this has been Stuff I Learned Yesterday.
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