Buggin'

Pop...KABOOM...Pop...applause.

You press the red button to stop the recording. You put the camera up to your ear to hear the sound. It's perfect.

"Always start your package with natural sound." The voice of trusted mentor, although thousands of miles away in another state, is as clear as if he's right next to you.

You see a kid and his dad head to the ice cream truck. You follow them with your camera in hand.

"You want to make sure you take video that makes sense. Tell a story. Shoot a sequence."

You call this sequence "kid eating ice cream". Not very creative, but you have a deadline. You take a wide shot of the truck and all the people waiting in line. You take two medium shots of people ordering. You wait until the kid has his ice cream cone, already melting from the summer heat. You take a tight shot of the cone, kid slightly out of focused. You see the strawberry ice cream through the lens of your camera. His eyes are wide with delight.

"When you edit, you lay three shots in a sequence. You can go from wide to medium to tight, or from tight to medium to wide. Never go from wide to wide, or medium to medium. You can go tight to tight."

You shoot more sequences. One titled "kids on playground", "families watching fireworks", and "band playing on the stage". You think you have enough footage for your story. You only need thirty seconds of video for air, and just still photos for the website.

You head back to your news van, but there's something bugging you. You want to explore more, take artistic photos with your camera and get to know the food truck vendors, the people popping off the fireworks. Who are they? Do they have other jobs? Can they simply make a living off of fireworks? The vendors - do they drive around the state? Why run a food truck and not a restaurant? Is that the ultimate goal?

There's a voice still running around in your head.

"You have a creative bug in you. You aren't made for the newsroom."

That 's the one . You thought you wanted to be in news, but now you're slowly feeling uninspired. The motivation that moved you before is no longer there. Your heart is not longer there. It's just a copy and paste formula.

But when you have your camera in hand, and you talk to people....The farmer talking about "million dollar rains" and the sheriff talking about the time he saw a man shoot himself during a stand-off. Those deep stories that mean something. You know you're on the right path. But it's slowly getting rockier. Less paved. You're okay with that.

News is a rat race. People go from small cities to larger ones. It's a path everyone has to follow. Climb the ladder. Be in the small towns to get to the big markets. But, you're not in it for the big markets. You're in it to have adventures, and to share the poetic nature of each person. Whether it's the widow with four children or the senator, so poised with years of practice...You want to portray the moment and that person. as authentic as possible.

You're unsure of where life is heading, but before you've had your life mapped out. What good is it to have life laid out in front of you, with each step laid out in front of you, like a tiled path leading to a gate. An image of a cemetery flashes through your mind. Cobblestone steps that lead to multiple graveyards. Who paved these tiles? You want to grab a pick axe, and tear out them one by one.

You plug in your laptop, drag your files to the cloud for the editors to grab later, and power everything down.

You head home.