Job Descriptions

When I started working some 20-odd years ago, I went grocery shopping for my boss. I sorted fan mail, and I knocked on dressing room doors to hand out script changes, most of which I had painstakingly cut and pasted by hand. It was a less than glamorous life some days, but I loved it, and from all these little pieces, many of which were not part of my official job description, I learned from the bottom up, and from the inside out, and it made me better at the next step.
 
When I learned how to be an AD, once I mastered the nuts and bolts, I discovered that being an AD is about more than just readying cameras and making edit notes. Being an AD is about supporting the director, whether the support is pointing out a shot or supplying a much-needed cup of coffee. It's about being in the trench. Perhaps not part of the job description, but it made my subsequent step to directing one that just made sense.
 
When I interviewed to work on a sitcom, I was to use all those camera readying skills, but, underlying it all, I was hired to help make things work, to see challenges and say, "yes, I can make that happen." And after four years on that sitcom, I learned that most things about which you say, "yes, I can make that happen" really do happen because you approached them that way. And that "yes, I can make that happen" has stayed with me ever since.
 
Life is not about your job description. It's what you choose to do with where you are, even if--and especially when--you're willing to go beyond your job description. When you're willing to say, "Yes. I can make that happen."