In the spring of 2004, I founded a low budget, but high-minded student filmmaking cooperative that eventually petered out in a fizzle of glory. At the time, many of us involved completely believed we were above reproach, and that there was absolutely no accountability for our actions. This self aggrandizing ideology spilled out into our fundraising efforts, our negotiations with faculty, and even became the name of our (now defunct) production company.
At the time, we believed that there was no situation we could not talk our way out of, no rule that couldn’t be broken, no punishment that we could not finagle our way out of. Naturally, we felt this rule of no accountability applied to our finances as well.
And for a time…it worked.
In those first few years, we talked our way out of parking tickets, got extensions on our assignments while we worked, ran up countless unpaid bar tabs, and spent a lot of time ignoring collection calls. At the height of our success, my partner at No Accountability Productions actually managed to finagle his way out of a signed military contract. Through it all, we just told ourselves, “Really, what’s the worst that could happen?”
Flash forward 4 years, and I realized that apparently I wasn’t the only one in this economy opperating under the No Accountability creed. Thankfully, I think I was a little ahead of the curve on that realization and have been dutifully repenting for my actions for the past several years. I’m on the way to rebuilding my finances, and thankfully haven’t been hit too hard in this latest downturn. In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king, and in this economic crisis, I’m one of the lucky ones.
