David McElroy

I live about 12 miles from the Birmingham airport, so I don’t normally pay much attention to planes coming in to land. But I was in my car Monday evening when a descending plane caught my attention. And it suddenly struck me how strange it is that hundreds of people at a time can go hurtling through the air in giant machines — thousands of times each day around the world — and it’s so routine that we don’t even notice.

We pay attention to the things that go wrong. Those are the things we consider to be “news.” But the really amazing thing is how many things go right every single day and we don’t even notice.

It’s not just airplanes. We live in a complicated world. We don’t grow our own food or have it shipped to us, but when we’re hungry, there’s almost anything we want just down the street at grocery stores and restaurants. There’s gasoline for our cars when we need it. There are new cars to buy when we want new ones. There’s new clothing before we realize we need it. And all of this happens without any bureaucrat planning it and without us even knowing ahead of time what we want.

See the huge trucks going down the road around you every day? And the trains and cargo planes you see? Those are carrying the goods we need to live a modern life. We don’t know how the logistics of all that works. We just know that what we want is there when we want it.

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When I launched this site three years ago today, the intended audience was only one person. Everything was written for her — in the hopes that she would find it and come back into my life. My hopes were rewarded. Sort of.

She came back into my life — in and out, back and forth — for most of the past three years. She was an avid reader of the site almost from the beginning. Then she became a regular commenter, first using a pseudonym and then using her real name (and a goofy picture with a wig).

She’s no longer a reader here and no longer part of my life. The details don’t really matter that much at this point. The psychology of what happened is actually very interesting, but it’s not in her best interest that the full story be told, so I won’t.

The only reason I tell you this story is to say that I started writing here with a surface-level purpose — which was quite real and honest — but always with a deeper and more important underlying purpose. Now that underlying purpose is completely gone, and I’m not sure anymore what my goals here are.

I haven’t been writing very much for months now. For nearly two years of the site’s existence, I wrote at least one article almost every day. For a long stretch of time, I also had a second article each day — written by the “staff monkeys” — with links of the day. I went through a lot of changes as a result of this experience, and it’s affected what I’m willing to write.

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I went to see the new movie “Moms’ Night Out” Friday. This family-friendly comedy isn’t something I’d normally see, but the film was shot in Birmingham by local directors and producers, so I wanted to see how many locations I recognized and how I liked their work.

I enjoyed seeing local streets and buildings that I know well, so I’m glad I went. I’m not really the target market for the movie, but it will probably do well for a low-budget family comedy (even though the reviews have been pretty brutal).

When I got home, I happened to put something down on the mantle above my fireplace. When I picked it up a couple of minutes later, I stood there for a minute and stared at some things I normally forget are even there — the awards that my one and only short film won almost 10 years ago.

I stood there and just stared, as though I was seeing them for the first time. And I berated myself once more for not making anything since then.

I shot “We’re the Government — and You’re Not” in December of 2004. Post-production was finally finished by the beginning of June 2005 and I started entering it into film festivals. Over the next 18 months or so, it was shown at 20 festivals and won five awards. In addition to U.S. festivals, it was screened in Canada, England, Australia and New Zealand.

Although it was my first film and I bumbled my way through the process at times, it was more successful than I ever dreamed it could be. It’s been seen on YouTube by close to 350,000 people since then.

As I stood there looking at a few of the awards Friday evening, I wasn’t sure whether to feel angry or ashamed for not having done another film. I saw myself as a filmmaker at the time. I have at least half a dozen scripts at various stages of development, ideas that I’m happy with and think would be good films. So why haven’t I done anything else?

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