Hol'up a minute!
This is an introduction post I wrote in an Israeli Facebook group, "The New World People", founded by Lior Frankle. It was later translated to English, so some humor or sarcasm might not got translated that well. All in all, the core idea still stands, and I hope you enjoy this post 🙂
Hi there, I'm Michael.
I design things; my mom thinks it’s pretty cool.
So after breaking the ice of this “introduction post” – Hello everyone 🙂 My name’s Michael, I’m 24 years old, I build websites and study animation in the Israeli Animation College. Before I continue, I have to ask you a question: Does anyone remember what they wanted to be when they grew up, when they were a kid?
Think about it, I’ll get back to that in a second.
When I was sixteen, I decided I wanted to be an animator. It was so cool – no one had any idea what they wanted to do in life; most friends my age didn’t know what they wanted to do on the weekend and I had already had it all figured out. I drew all my life and it was just felt like the right digivolution. The most stressful question you can think of at that age, and I had the coolest answer.
Then at the age of 21, I was discharged from the army and a question came up. And another. And another. Everyone started asking me lots of questions. On school. And on a degree. And where will I live, am I planning a big trip after the army, where am I planning my big trip after the army? Did I get vaccinated? Am I allergic to a specific medicine? Wait, what’s my blood type anyway? (“Hello Mom? What’s my blood type? Everything’s fine, I’m just asking for a friend”), do you have a girlfriend? Why not? Why are you not traveling? Have you started planning your future? Wait, you didn’t sign-up for school yet?! What kind of career will you have? Maybe quit your job as a waiter and do something meaningful with your life? Stop messing around and find a stable job! What do you want to do? Is there money in it? You’re smart, I’m sure you’ll succeed.
HELP.
All of a sudden I noticed that with all these questions, the coolest answer I had got lost in all the noise. In its place came more questions; This time, even more stressful. Do I even want to be an animator? Maybe I just said it to relieve stress? It’s easier to say I know everything – it’s harder to admit I have no clue. And once I lost that truth, I lost my identity.
We all have cornerstone moments in our lives. We will have some during our lifetime, but you can never know when they’ll arrive. For me, one of these moments was during the premiere of the film “Zootopia”. Specifically, the scene where policewoman Judy Hops arrives at Zootopia and sees the city in all its glory; the buildings, the residents, the traffic, the textures – the animation!
I got all teary-eyed from the excitement. I found my answer again!
At that moment I decided I wanted to create it. Well, not exactly that because it already exists; I wanted to do something like this. Like Pixar. Like Disney. Like Marvel… Just Farber.
Something that will make other people feel the way I felt at that moment.
At the beginning of the post, I mentioned that I am studying animation. As part of our studies, we do workshops, directing, acting, writing, and other interesting film-related mambo-jumbo. We learned to write scripts and watch movies from a director’s point of view. Suddenly everything connected to me. All the questions I had for my answer led to this conclusion – I want to be a creator. I want to create stories and share them. I always wanted to be a director, I just didn’t know it.
That brings me back to the question I asked you at the beginning: Do any of you remember what they wanted to be when they were a child? How many of us really do today what we wanted to do when we were younger?
I’m just asking because I’ve been thinking about it lately. I don’t remember what exactly evoked the association of this moment, but I just remembered when Hadar, my first-grade teacher, asked: “Who knows what they want to be when they grow-up?” And one by one everyone answered – policeman, firefighter, doctor, actress, footballer… and I shouted with enthusiasm:
I want to be Batman!
Hadar smiled. “You can’t be Batman. it’s not a profession.”
“Oh, it isn’t?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Well, then I want to be a painter!”
The teacher smiled again.
“But you can’t paint as a profession.”
Fast-forward 17 years later, I’m sitting in my room and come to the conclusion – fuck. I’m going to do what I wanted to do when I was a kid. What Hadar, and all the other teachers and responsible adults who came after her, kept telling me – is a mistake.
I'm going to be Batman!
Now, you’re probably thinking to yourself “but you can’t be Batman.”
Unfortunately, you’re right. I can’t be Batman. So if I can’t be Batman, then I’ll be Christopher Nolan; only – Michael Farber. It suits me better.
So I ask you again: Does anyone remember what they wanted to be when they grew up when they were a kid?
Since I wrote this post...
And I kept it on my computer, I started working on an animation with a friend from school, and as a final project and first job as a studio, we created a music video for an Israeli band that garnered more than 80,000 views. I also got to work on interesting projects in the field of directing and acting. This development has inspired and motivated me to publish this post in the group among the abundance of successful posts posted there.
I would still love to know: Does anyone remember what they wanted to be when they grew up when they were a kid? How different is it from what you are doing now?
אני נעזר בעוגיות ללא-גלוטן כדי לשפר את חווית המשתמש באתר. המשך גלישה באתר מהווה הסכמה ל
2 Responses
I’m 26 y.o. and I still don’t know who I want to be when I grow up! Because I want to be a lot of things at the same time, or at least try to be a lot of things during my lifetime. My plan is to do what I love at a certain period of time, but also learn new professions that excite me and don’t force myself to choose only one.
I know the feeling! I keep having new ideas and change my mind from time to time, but that’s ok. We evolve and develop new passions. That plan sounds amazing, by the way, I truly hope it works out 🙂