Do Something Real

"Do something real." That was my mom's be-all end-all catchphrase for a while, right after "Attitude is everything!" and metaphors about the Well-Oiled Family Machine. It applied to Boy Scouts ("Why are they hammering nails into a board? Why aren't they building something? Do something real!"), to my writing ("Why don't you actually submit to somewhere? Might as well do something real") and to her pet project, the Annual Southeast Idaho Pumpkin Walk ("At least it's something real").

It sounds like I'm complaining. I am — I sort of feel it's my bound duty as a barely-older-than-teenage daughter. But when it all boils down, she's right.

Last year I got the chance to do something scarily real and pretty awesome. I wrote and co-directed a musical for my community theater back home as part of an internship.

The writing took place between classes and on weekends through most of winter semester. In early summer the show was cast, and I drove home twice a week or more to conduct rehearsals. We were rearranging and cutting scenes until two weeks before we opened and the final songs weren't finished until the last possible minute. It was terrifying. I had no time for homework, friends, a job, or anything else.

And yet... I did. Somehow or other, I managed to get homework mostly done, developed and strengthened some of the most important friendships of my life, held a job I loved, and still had time to sit on the lawn of my complex and watch the sunsets and be happy. Don't ask me how it works; I only know the why.

It all boils down to exactly what my mom was talking about. I was doing something real. It was real enough that cast members would come find me after rehearsal and tell me how being in the show was helping their confidence; it was real enough that people are still asking for copies of the soundtrack. More to the point, it was real enough that I cared, and it turns out that caring comes with crazy amounts of energy and motivation, for the project at hand and everything that goes with it.

I'm not suggesting people attempt full-time freelance careers as a side dish to school, or that people stop going to work in order to write on their great American novels. But maybe good grades or pay raises aren't enough. Maybe we need to do something that matters, whatever that means to you. A blog, an art project, applying for a job you don’t think you’ll get, building a car from scratch, sewing your own wedding dress, learning to manage your finances and pay your taxes without anyone else's help: if it's a little scary and something that calls to you, it's legit.

That's my pep talk. Like all lectures, parental or otherwise, this one is made up of just words. I can't make you do anything. But trust me, I'm channeling my mother for a reason. Do something real. It may end up being the coolest thing you ever do.


Images by dbdbrobot and divemasterking2000.