(This is from my book of essays being released later this year).
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Life is all about balance. What you have to do is find the perfect middle ground of being too hard on yourself, and being too easy on yourself. Most people I see in this life that I want nothing to do with veer too far off into one of the two.
If you’re too hard on yourself you might be a successful person, but you’re also just being an unrealistic stick in the mud. I wouldn’t want to hang out with a dude who only cares about money, that’s sociopath shit. Money and success are awesome, but people that make that their entire lives are boring as hell to me. There are basketball players that had careers where they shattered previous records, and famous stories where they’re really hard on themselves and practicing constantly, etc. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, but I think balance is way better. In order to be a record-breaking kind of person you literally have to sacrifice other areas of your life that are actually healthy for you. There are also stories of other famous figures in our culture who got incredibly rich and successful for starting successful companies or a highly revered work of art, which is cool, but when you look at their family lives they were all awful people. I don’t even want to name any of these people in case I get sued, but you get the idea: this is a common thing among so-called successful folks. The road to riches is often paved with a lot of bad things that aren’t too nice to talk about, like an absent father, or someone that had no social life and nothing else going on for him besides his work.
On the other end of this spectrum, if you’re too easy on yourself you become a drive-less loser, something the world is filled with already. You know the types I’m talking about. People that post photos of every meal they have on social media are probably not going to be changing the world in any substantial way anytime soon. These are not the kind of folks I aspire to be like. They let life happen to them and take it a little too easy. People that have seen every single Marvel movie, every episode of House of Cards, or alcoholics, to name a few types, are not people I wanna know or be around, period. There are too many examples to keep going: this group of people are all complacent and never question life or think about things too philosophically.
My thing has always been about balance. Work hard, play hard is a cliche that has stuck around for all these years for a reason. I find when I’m deeply at work on a project I care very deeply about, I will pretty much think about nothing else other than that for awhile. When I wrote The Lost Generation, for example, I didn’t do much other than think about that. In order to make good art you have to live whatever it is you’re doing, I feel. You have to live, sleep, breathe, eat, shit your interests otherwise you’re just doing whatever it is as a hobby.
Whenever I write a screenplay I often brainstorm about it for a couple months, then when I write it that’s another couple months of laser focus. After that’s over I will have another lazy period where I’m a piece of garbage, and I make myself feel so bad about being lazy that I get back to work on something else. I could probably be better about this balance, but I think it’s a great process that has served me quite well. People should never remain too much on one side for too long or they’ll either become hollow workaholics with no souls or losers with no spines.