BS
Group leader
Personal manager
Artist’s agent
Theater-Arts teacher

Five jobs:
Advertising Manager
Business Conslutant
Artist’s agent
Theater-Arts teacher

Wanted to find out more about the job Advertising manager:
“Advertising managers direct a firm’s or group’s advertising and promotional campaign.”

My dad likes to be outdoors and sometimes we go skiing together. He is in many ways an academic person. He likes math and he tried making me like mat. That didn’t work.

I’ve heard a lot of people say that I’m nothing like my dad and I think that’s true. We are way different. We have had way differten upbrining I guess and I guess that I’ve allways tried going my own way whatever that really means.

Sometimes my dad can be frustrating and sometimes he can be great. Sometimes he can be really unreasonible and sometimes he makes me think that I’m glad I have him, I’m glad he is around.

He is my dad, my parent, you gotta love him.

God is writing the world. God placed us within the world – he brought charathers into the story he is writing. What does this mean? Maybe that our life matter. Maybe that, even though we cant read the final draft, we are participatens in a great and wonderfull work of fiction – or reality. Our role is important; when we face conflict we are apart of a big, great story.
Life means something.

Chapter 8  – The elements of a meaningful life

“A character who wants something and overcomes conflict to get it.” This is the definition on a story, Don learned after his 36 – hour seminar. McKee got angry with Don for talking while he was lecturing. ” This is not TV, this is a theater,” he said.

Chapter 9 – How Jason saved his family.

Jason, a friend of Don, tells Don that his daughter, Rachel, is doing drugs and that she is dating a “bad guy”.

Maybe your daughter isn’t living a good story? Don asks. Don keeps on going and tells his friend Jason about the seminar he went to and how we are all living a story and that stories involve risk-taking and heroes.

Chapter 11 -  Inperfect is perfect.

Don gets back from the seminary and is ready to start telling a really good story. But when his friends( director and camera man) come around it’s not the way the pictured it would be. And then Steve brings up the fact that Don doesn’t have a father. This makes Don emotional and he has a flash back to when he was young. His mum never talked about his father. He wants it in the movie.

Chapter 12 – We’ll be different in the end.

Don reflect on our bodies and he talks to this arts students that tell him our bodies recreate themselves every six months or so. We are in constant change. We evolve. We are not stagnant.

That is, in a way, exiting because it gives hope in a way. Cause sometimes I feel tired of being me. Just sometimes, when the sky is gray and there is nothing to do. But we are in constant change. We can grow and become more interesting. Our roles can change.

Don also thinks about reality and how he has been living in his daydreams instead of in the real world. So his actual story, the story of his life, is not a whole lot.

He also sees someone in a coffee shop and he feels like it’s reality. He feels like the husband has lived a lot more than him.

Chapter 13 – Saving the cat.

Don wants to create tension, conflict, but Ben says it’s too early.

Why? Don asks.

So Ben tells him about a book called save a cat. The first 20 minutes or so, we need our characters to do something good. We need to get on their side. Because, if we don’t, we wont care about the character. We wont care weather he defeats his conflicts or nor. We won’t engage in the story.

He talk about Rocky and the movie. The first hour he is like the mother Theresa of boxing. Kind of funny.

Chapter 15  -  Listen to your writer.

Don made this analogy, that God is like him in a way. That Don sits down on his computer and he writes about his story and his characters. Sometimes the characters want to do something else than the writer. And that is how it’s like with God. He whisperer into our ear and tells us what we should do. He is patient and he does this because he has a greater story for us, than we do.

Don hears this voice and starts listening to it. Following it. In the beginning it’s weird, but it gets easier. And one day, the voice tells Don that he should meet his father and forgive him. At first he doesn’t want to hear, but eventually, after reading a devotional, he decides he wants to act out whatever story God has planned for him.

I guess our consciousness is, in a way, God voice , telling us what is right and wrong. I’ve never really thought about our consciousness as something supernatural, something spiritual, something divine. But maybe it is. that is something very beautiful.

If the creator of the universe, planets, stars, black holes and oceans, is whispering to our ear, than we ought to listen.

Chapter 16 -  Something on the page.

Chapter 17-How to write a better story.

It’s hard to change. He talks about it in this chapter. Change wants something from you. And although we talk about changing all the time, we rarely have what it takes to actually do it.

We need something to push us against change.

Chapter 18 – Inciting Incident

He talks about himself and how he got invited to this trip by a friend to go and hike the monutanins of Machu Pichu. A girl he liked said she wanted to with him, so her friend and the girls decided to join. It turned out that the trip was really hard and Don knows he’s in terrible shape. So, without knowing it, he had jsut created an inciting incident. Now it’s up to him whether his story will be a tragedy or a thriller.

He also talk about fare, and how it’s a manipulating thing, and if you make it affect you, you will live a boring life.

Chapter 19 -Pointing towards the horizon

Ambitions make great history.

Don signs up in his gym and he gets a personal trainer. The trainer tells him that it’s all about progress. Don talks about pointing towards the horizon. Pointing creates a fear of failure but it also creates ambitions, it makes life meaningful.

Chapter 20 – Negative Turns.

There are dark forces in this world and they are keeping us from living out our good stories, or to create something beautiful.

Don says he read this book about writing and the writer of the book says that the harder something is, the more you should try to do it. Anything that is difficult is also beatyfull if you go through with it.

Don learned that his father died some time ago. But I have the feeling is isn’t over yet…

21 – A good story, hijacked

Advertising. That’s what what this chapther dealt with. He talked about how stupid we can be sometimes, and how he stupid he had been. He bought a stupid vacumcleaner and he said that what we buy is what type of story we’re living.

If you would tell a story about this guys that lifes so he can buy a big fancy house, that wouldn’t make a good book, and it wouldn’t make a good life either. What we spend time on shapes our story.

He also mentions that sex sells, which it does. And it’s everywhere. It’s one of the cheapest ways of seduction but obviously the selling tactics works, otherwise advertising companies wouldn’t continue to pump their “sexy” commercials all over our clode.

You go to Abercrombie to buy a pair of jeans, and the walls are filled with shirtless guys. When you think about it, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

23  – A positive turn

He realises his father is alive and he goes to see him.

His father says he’s sorry(he is kind of drunk so he opens up) and that Don really knows how to write. Don didn’t want to need those words but he did and his fathers words went into his soule like water.

Having a dead in your life is important. He’s a role model in many ways. Not knowing your father most be tough.

I know my father and I’m glad.

24 – Meeting Bob

He talks to Steve about what makes a story epic. He tells him a couple of key elements need to be in place:

Must be difficult to obtain. The ambition needs to be sacrificial.  The character needs risk.

He goes kayaking with a friend on American Columbia(?)

Chapther 25 -

He talks about his idea: he wants to start up a mentorig program for kids that grew up without a father. A friend introduces him to a business man – a rich one – that grew up with parents with alcohol program. His name is Duncan Cambell and he really likes Don’s idea.

Would it be possible to start up something like this in Fergus? I think so. There are a lot of kids who dosn’t have fathers here. I know at least to people that have a dad in jail, and there are a lot of Churches in this little town. It all adds up. One simply need some guts to go through with it.

Chapter 26 – The thing about a crossing.

Don talks to a friend that is very successful despite of the fact that he is a foster kid, and he grew up in twenty different foster homes. Don asks him, who he came to be so successful?

Well, Don, he says, when things get tough in life you have two choices: You can either get bitter or better. I choose to be better.

In that’s what this chapter was about. It said, basically, the point of a journey is not the end goal, it’s what you learn on the way to this goal and how you change on the way there.

Joy makes us happy, but it dosn’t change us. Joy is what we recive when we overcome conflict.

Chapter 27 – The pain will bind us( Smerten vil binde oss)

He rides through America with fifteen other people. He talks about pain and how pain binds us together. Through shared experiences – just knowing you’re not alone suffering pain – creates love between persons, mends strong relationships, stronger than friendships that have suffered no pain.

We are all together in this world, but sometimes we feel lonely. These shared experiences remind us that we are not alone and that we may suffer, but at least we suffer together.

Chapter 28 – A tree in a story about a forrest

He talks about how we must understand that life is not all about us, but that we are participators and a so grand story that it exceeds that of our own story could ever be.

There will be times when you feel sad and at these times we just have to rest in the Lord. When we go through periods of suffering we must realize that we don’t know why it’s happening, but we can rest asure that it’s happening because of a reason.

Suffering is a part of life and if we can’t escape that. But we can learn to think that conflict makes us better, and that conflict makes a better story. It’s not easy, and sometimes I would claim it’s impossible, but we should try. And we should remember that we are a tree in a story about a forest.