Moving Forward, Looking Back

This morning, Facebook took the liberty of reminding me that exactly one year ago, I finished four weeks of editing work at Bayou Billionaires. It was all at once surprising (well, who wakes up to that?), disturbing (has it really been that long since that leap into reality?), and encouraging (as I am now on a job that has lasted more than just a few weeks).
 
In our efforts to move forward, we seldom take the opportunity to look back--there's just not time, and looking back (if we do it honestly) requires revisiting failures as well as successes. Who wants to do that? So while I might have been shocked by Facebook's presuming to make me look back, I was also kind of grateful. It matters to what I am doing now, who I am now, that I worked four weeks of Bayou Billionaires a year ago. It matters that there were weeks of no paid work after that and another reality show a few months later. Whether in a slow work year or a very busy one, each thing that happens informs the next. So, when I, largely thanks to Facebook, look back on that Bayou Billionaires experience, I remember how empowering it was to teach myself new things because, well, I had to. How humbling it was to be a stranger--an experienced stranger, but a stranger--in a strange land. How exciting it was when the pieces of this new thing came together, and how great it felt when producers appreciated my sense of story.
 
A year, and many, many experiences have passed since then. And new experiences will continue to pass. I just have to make sure that while forging ahead, I remember, with or without Facebook, to look back.