Pre-So Cal

06/19/2010

         Wednesday, June 9^th of 2010 was the day that everything changed. The previous week was my last living in my parent’s second home of Citrus Heights. I had lived in that house for more than 12 years. That whole week and a half I spent completing all the final tasks I needed done before my move to So Cal. I lengthened the stay one day after another, saying that I had to finish the list of important to-do's. Which was true, but in reality, it wasn’t the real reason I stayed for another two days. I stayed, because I was finally feeling the severity of what moving really meant. I was saying goodbye to everything I had ever known, loved, hated, and even been apathetic to.

            Though my lifetime dream was to move to LA and pursue a career in film, it wasn’t tangible and concrete like my life in Nor Cal. Though everything had fallen into place in a miraculous, unconceivable fashion to ensure my path to LA, the vision of a new life was nothing compared to the 21 year, real memory in Sac. I am a Thinker; a hesitant, level-headed, patient yet unassertive man of ideas. I have a habit to cut myself short of progress; …a fail-safe to be nothing more than mediocre. Mediocre, exactly what I swore [as a child standing before my parents] not to be. I am like a turtle, a hermit, a groundhog. I prefer the safety and stability of my shell or cave, but when it comes time to come out in the light and find a new abode, I remain back. While others advance onto the dance floor of life, I’ve stayed at the sidelines, bench lined by my own fear and anticipation. Risk, though a favorite hallmark board-game of mine, is not my game.  Though staying in one place can come with its own share of difficulties, challenges, and hardships, you can’t really ever get anywhere else from there. …Unless you move, but that requires risk, and, well, I’ve always preferred the safe zone. I’ve always looked off to the horizon and fantasized about the grand, magnificent possibilities, but I am not the jock, wiz, or talent that has the confidence and skill to advance. And yet, fear of what waited for me beyond the horizon was not what held me back. No, it was the thoughts of all the possibilities that I had missed behind me.

            This hesitation wasn’t reminiscing… I wasn’t regretting things that had happened. I was regretting what things would and could not happen with my leaving. All the friends and people and family that I’ve known for so long, the Life of Matthew Lengyel in Nor Cal was not a future. It was an alternate reality, a timeline severed from the real. It was a life that did not and could not exist; it was but a dream. And so, my future was no longer just two roads dividing, but two dreams, two paths that no longer had any unyielding, concrete facts. And there was no turning back; only my ultimate tool… hesitation. That is why I stayed…

            …But only for a moment. I only stayed long enough to say goodbye to the things that truly mattered to me. They weren’t the endings I would have wanted; they weren’t the picture perfect farewells and finales that I would have dreamed up. They were short, quick, and drained; moments that weren’t celebrations or even mere hangouts. They felt like numb, unspoken eulogies, where we all pretended that nothing really was happening or changing. They were untimely, ill-placed epilogues. “This will be the rest of your life” felt like the end of it. It felt like I had been writing a long novel, and I had created dozens of side plots, all twisting and turning, leading to an epic finale!… but then my Publisher came and told me I only had two weeks to write the ending. And now that the ending is finished, I feel like I missed something. It’s like when George Lucas made Star Wars Episode III, and it got to 1 hr and 11 minutes into the script, and he forgot everything he had ever been leading up to. That’s what people like to call an: EPIC FAIL. But I digress… :P

            Despite my hesitation, despite my worries, despite my melancholy, I knew something that never before had I known. For all my life, living in Los Angeles was just a dream of mine. It was a fantasy that I never thought would or could possibly be real. But now, I knew; it was not just my dream anymore. I knew that even if I stayed in Nor Cal, things would still change. Things always do. This season in my life, no matter whatever I did, everything would never be the same. I knew that the day I turned 21. I’m no longer a kid, no longer a teenager. This was the time for Me to change with the change, because you’re either riding the wave, or crashing under it. I love to think, I love to dream, but sometimes, most of the time, you’ve just got to act, or else life will pass you by. And so, even though I wish I could have stayed, though I wish the alternate reality could have been real, we all have a certain amount of fate we must follow. Fate is what happens to us, but Destiny is the path we can choose to have. 

End of an Era

5/13/2010

The Countdown to change is flashing by. Are you ready, Matthew?

For nearly all my life, I have lived in the same town. From bouncing between new schools and churches in the area, to my first and current job at United Artist movie theatre in Roseville for five years (with a brief intermission at Safeway in Granite Bay), this is pretty much all I know. This has been my world. But this was not where it all began for me. 

I was born in the City of Angels, where much of my extended family lives, but I was moved before I can even remember to the Sacramento Area, and this is where I have dwelt since. I have been a part of many things throughout my life living here, but nearly every year I visited LA, I always felt that was where my family was. And from a simple moment of watching an awe inspiring movie in 4th grade, I have dreamed of a future...a career with Movies. Since then, I've felt my heart calling me back to the City of Angeles.

I must admit, I have been delusional and starry-eyed, fantasizing and daydreaming of things that I knew were not real. I haven’t been exceptionally good at many things in my life, but I have always been the master of imagination. There has been nowhere I couldn’t go…in my mind. And in the back of my head, there was always the faint whisper of reality telling me they were all fake, all lies, but I pushed them aside year after year, telling myself I’d be purposefully oblivious for just another year. And in truth, even now, I can not definitively say the validity of that thought process.

But in the last couple of years in college, as I’ve struggled with my sins and flaws, slowly I have dedicated myself to something more then just my dream. I hesitated for so long to commit, not because I didn’t believe in Him, but I didn’t believe in me. I didn’t believe he could work in me. I partially still don’t. But I’ve come to see myself do things I thought I’d never do before… Simple things that I thought I’d never have the stomach to confront.

But any good in me isn’t even me. Thank God…

As much as I hate my mistakes, as much as I regret some of the things I have done, I know that every single choice, good or bad, has brought me here…. Which is exactly where God wants me. My regrets and past and dreams have weighed me down, because I wouldn’t let them go.

I don’t even know when it happened, but suddenly, in a moment, I passionately and painstakingly was willing to sacrifice everything I had in me (which wasn’t/isn’t much), even my dream (which meant more to me than nearly anything in my whole life), for Christ. I prayed earnestly that He’d guide me, that He’d kill my dreams for my future if it wasn’t what he wanted for me. And the trials grew harder, and more was put on risk as that future began to morph from the abstract to the potential possible. And I felt weaker and weaker with the weight, and I screamed in my head for the doors to be smashed in my face. And then…three days later, the door opened.

I still have my doubts, and even since that day, I haven’t allowed myself to be over come with excitement by this dream. I haven’t allowed the resolving potential fact to sink in. And even now, a few weeks away, with it all becoming nearly concrete, I still haven’t allowed the emotions to storm in fully. Every time before, every time I almost moved down to LA in the last couple of years, the door always shifted, and I was always afraid, clutching fast to the world I knew, not ready to let go. And now, my feet and mind are loose, and I might just fall and be dropped into a new place: CSU Northridge.

But this is it. Even if my specific expectations for the future do not come true, I am (unless the door closes at the last minute) moving to the City of Angeles. I am not deluded anymore, and I’m also not intentionally oblivious and naïve anymore. I know that the City of Angeles isn’t the Realm of the Heavenly. In fact, the irony is I’m moving into the Heart of Darkness. I do not deny that I am probably not ready for any of this, but I know I’m Never Alone. And I know no matter how much I fail and fall, God squeezes good out of the worst of us. So here goes nothing… here goes everything. I risk all I have, in the only way I know. I’m following the signs.

So, I am leaving Nor Cal. On May 21^st, I depart for a week, and then I’ll be back here from the 31^st through June 6^th, and then, God-willed, I move to So Cal. I’m leaving behind everything I’ve ever known. So wish me not goodbye, just see you later.

Thank you all that have read this far for caring so much for me. Every moment, every experience that I’ve had with you will propel me forward.

Hopefully, I’m falling up.