Monday, July 5, 2010

Hormone Imbalance

Kiddo is a seven year old white and calico cat. Chronically sick, he's always had problems with his skin, respiratory infections, and tummy issues. A lost cause, I had just given up that he would ever be a happy, healthy cat. He has his kitty playmate, Billie, who he loves dearly, and is passionately sweet with me. But he is always sick. This is not a good life for a cat.

Today, he was diagnosed. He has a hormone imbalance. This causes flare ups throughout his systems, causing an almost constant pinkish tone in his skin, as well as on his nostrils, gums, esophagus, and lungs. It is easily treated with some hormone pills. Finding this out was like having a new lease on life. He may not know it yet, but I am celebrating for him. His life is about to get exponentially better and I couldn't be more jazzed.

I sometimes wonder just how sick I am as well. I am in an industry that seems chronically ill. The film industry has little festering wound after nagging cold. Nothing that serious that you would scream abandon ship quite yet, but alarming nevertheless. As every new film comes out, the same generic actors grace the screen in mediocre scripts with formulaic plots. Everyone I know complains and everyone in the industry complains and everyone at the studios complain, and yet who is making the decisions? Who is ignoring the cries and complaints and hoping it just gets better on its own? Financiers and marketing teams. At one of the major studios, the co-head of distribution and production started in marketing and worked up to distribution. This person has never been on the creative side yet holds some of the great greenlight power. It's like a doctor who hasn't had an internship treating cancer.

I hold out hope and leap into my MBA convinced that I will find the cure, the new cocktail of meds required, to turn this business around. However, it is just as likely that I'll find out that, unlike my kitty, it's not a simple overarching problem. If that occurs, I have two choices. Either keep treating each little illness that comes along, or find an industry that isn't chronically ill. The further I get from gainful employment in the industry and the more conversations I have with people who work in it, who are coughing and sneezing and just plain sick about how things are working, I sometimes wonder if this industry that I love has a cure or if I'll have to put it down, step away, and put my love and passion into something new. I guess that's why I'm on this journey.