5 minute read
How to Eat a Giant Bowl of Spaghetti by Erin Levin
DAY 4 HOW TO EAT A GIANT BOWL OF SPAGHETTI
By Erin Levin
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Producer of Imba Means Sing, her first documentary feature, and freelance writer for The Huffington Post.
@makinggoodnews
You know that blinking line on the bright white page on your computer begging you to write something worth sharing? That’s how many stories begin. Staring at the blinking line. That nagging, silent, unhelpful – yet incredibly inspiring and open-to-anything blinking line. That’s how this story begins as well…
Now get your head off the blinking line and imagine sitting right next to you is a gigantic bowl of spaghetti. The biggest bowl you’ve ever seen. You love spaghetti. In fact, it’s your all-time favorite food. You always dreamed of enjoying a bowl of spaghetti that large. That significant. Now is your moment to dive into that delicious bowl headfirst and eat your heart out.
My big bowl of spaghetti, my favorite thing in the world, is telling stories that I believe will make this world a better place. I mostly tell stories without the annoying yet invigorating blinking line on the computer screen. My stories are told through video. Sometimes I wish I felt called to fill bright white computer pages with beautiful words coming from that blinking line. But I know that God has clearly called me to tell stories with moving images instead. I’m not the one who makes the images look pretty, or the one that splices all of the content together on an editing timeline. I’m not even the one who develops the creative direction of the work. I produce.
Wikipedia says film producers “prepare and then supervise the making of a film… they helm the creative people as well as the accounting personnel.”
Let me tell you what this film producer does. I eat spaghetti all day long and none of it ever seems to go away. No, really, that’s what I do (metaphorically, at least).
I am crazy passionate about my film, Imba Means Sing. It’s about two kids – Angel and Moses – and their friends who come from living in extreme poverty in Uganda. They were too poor to attend school. But they were super talented and became members of the Grammy-nominated African Children’s Choir. My film crew and I have been following them on their world tour for over a year now, capturing incredible moments on camera. Former Choir members are now human rights attorneys, HIV/AIDS doctors and TV news anchors – all lifting their communities up on their own. I have no doubt that Moses will achieve his dream to be a pilot and that Angel will even reach hers – becoming Uganda’s first female President.
Thinking about these kids and how to share their story with the world is my dream job, and it is what I do all… the... time. But my dream giant bowl of
spaghetti, or the making of this film, seems to never get eaten. Even when I eat the spaghetti twelve hours a day six days a week, there is still so much more to eat. But this was my dream, I think, to eat all this spaghetti!
The truth is dreams take a long time to make come true, and problems can take a long time to solve. We cannot do it alone. I brought in an amazing team to help me eat all the spaghetti. Together, sometimes it actually looks like we’re making progress. Our footage is brilliant. Our storyline is coming together. But then I look back and see so much more freaking spaghetti. So many more thousands and thousands of dollars that I need to raise. So many more people that I need to have coffee with to share our vision. So many more moments that we need to capture on camera. So little time to finish before the kids return to their new life and education in Uganda.
Let me tell you, dear friends, sitting next to a giant bowl of your passion project spaghetti, you can do it. I will do it. This dream, this bowl, this marathon, this film will get finished. And it will be incredible. If it only took one sitting to finish the spaghetti, what would we learn? How would we grow? Where would we witness God’s miracles? Here are seven steps that have helped me on this long journey to turn my problem-solving idea into reality:
1. When you see the blinking line on your computer screen, write what you are thinking. Get it out there. Begin to make your idea real. 2. Seek serious counsel from people you trust and admire to see if your idea is needed in your community and if you have what it takes to bring it to life. (Plywood People is a perfect resource for this.) 3. Once you start, be idealistic that it will happen but also realistic that it might take a lot longer and be a lot harder than you ever imagined. 4. Be open to miracles happening. If you give
God space, He will provide. 5. On the days where you don’t feel like God or your friends or your family or your staff or you are working well for your project, go for a walk, do yoga, have a margarita or cry. It’s okay. Tomorrow will be better. Or at least the next day. 6. When it’s been a year and you feel like the bowl of spaghetti has actually grown instead of been eaten, close your eyes and think these thoughts: a. That bowl is your passion and your favorite food and you prayed for it to come into your life. b. A year ago you had zero funding, now look at how much you’ve raised. A year ago you had no partners, now you have an awesome team. A year ago you had an idea, now you have created something that might actually change the world. 7. Very regularly go back to that bowl full of your passion and remember why you wanted it. What you loved about its taste. Why it inspired you to make something new or something better. It is what you’re working so hard for. Enjoy it!
