I wasn't afraid of losing my paycheck nearly as much as losing myself. (3 of 3)

Getting fired forced me to confront who I was without my career—and what it would cost me to keep going.

The following is part 3 of my 3-part series, "Every Dream Comes With a Cost" — a deeply personal essay about creative burnout, the true cost of success, and the terrifying moment when I realized:

“What if I’ve spent my entire life chasing the wrong dream?”

If you missed it → here’s part 2.

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I remember the exact moment when my dream job became my nightmare.

Never in my career as a Hollywood film & television editor did I think I'd say to myself, "You couldn't pay me enough for this shit" when for as long as I could remember the childlike voice inside my head instead screamed, "I cannot believe they're paying me for this!" But days on end of sifting through crotch close-ups has a way of changing a man.

I was editing the cold open of Empire episode 215 (the #1 show on network television at the time). When we last left one of the main characters, Hakeem, he had just been fired as the CEO of the family business and was on a bender at a strip club. Given the show was one to push as many boundaries as a television network like Fox would allow, the intent of the scene was to feel as graphic as possible without involving the FCC. Watching the final broadcast version you might think it's pretty tame, nothing to see here. That was not the case with the dailies. I spent hours upon hours watching, re-watching, organizing, and editing endless shots of egregious and invasive close-ups of every single angle, crevice, and contour of those strippers' bodies as they writhed on those poles like synchronized swimmers.

When you love your craft, it's all-but-impossible to avoid the work consuming you. It permeates your brain, seeps into your skin, and enters your soul. Spending all of your waking hours (and a lot of your sleeping hours) workshopping a complex creative problem in your head can be the funnest, most fulfilling experience imaginable...if they are problems you are excited to solve. But when you could care less about the problems you're solving and the stories you're telling—or even worse when the work is misaligned with your values—the existential dread can destroy you.

As I sat in my dark, windowless room staring at the 50th crotch close-up that day, my creative soul screamed "No more!" Never in my career had I thought of leaving a show before it was delivered. I wasn't a quitter. Moreover, I am a completionist to a fault (Proof: I finished the final season of Dexter). Yet despite the stability and prestige that working on a hit show afforded me, intuitively my gut knew it was time to choose a different path.

Apparently the universe was looking out for me because, I shit you not, that week I received a call from my agent. Netflix was about to start shooting a new high profile drama series, and the creators of the show were interested in meeting with me. Under any other circumstances I would've politely declined and said I'm unavailable. But this was my chance. I took the meeting, had a great interview, and within a week I was offered the job.

Less than two weeks before starting production on the Empire season 2 finale, I walked into the showrunner's office on a Monday morning, thanked her for the wonderful opportunity to be part of such a groundbreaking show, and I told her I would be leaving on Friday. Oddly enough she wasn't as surprised as I expected. Despite my best attempts at hiding it, over the last few months my face perhaps bore the weight of existential dread much more than I suspected. I did my best to make the transition smooth for the incoming editor, and I walked away from what had been the biggest opportunity of my career.

It turns out the universe wasn't actually looking out for me—it was fucking with me. No more than three weeks into this new job, I was fired. I had never been fired from a job before in my career, nor have I been fired since. When you work at the highest levels with reputations at stake and millions of dollars on the line, often times it's no longer just about your proficiency in your craft, it's about your ability to speak a very specific creative language. And this show (which shall remain nameless) was a filmic language I simply couldn't comprehend. It was a mutual breakup, and I hold no ill will whatsoever towards the filmmakers who are incredibly talented. It just wasn't the right fit.

Mutual breakup or otherwise, in less than a month I fell from the top of the game to the unemployment line. After fifteen years of sacrifice, I finally had the credits to get any meeting I wanted! Yet every instinct told me to run for the hills. I couldn't face one more day selling my creative soul for a paycheck at the expense of not being there for my family. There was one thing, however, even more terrifying than the black pit of despair eating me alive from the inside:

My only alternative was "starting over."

While I didn't know it at the time, it wasn't the fear of losing a paycheck that terrified me nearly as much as the fear of losing myself. My job wasn't just my career, it was my entire identity. There was no version of Zack that didn't include my love, my passion, my obsession with editing and storytelling. Since first hooking up two VCR's at the age of nine (holy shit did I just date myself there), my life's direction had been predetermined. Upon hitting play on one VHS deck, record on the other, and then watching the magic that came from combining two things that hadn't belonged together until that very moment (because of me!), I knew my life's purpose.

Up until this point in my career, the only version of Zack I recognized was the one who worked relentlessly towards the singular moment where he would be standing on the most coveted stage in all of Hollywood; the stage where he was accepting his Oscar. Who did I think I was to abandon his goals in pursuit of meaning beyond my work? But having spent months on end putting my kids to bed via FaceTime, there was one singular moment I was willing to work even more relentlessly away from on an even more important stage: The stage where my kids accept their high school diplomas, transfer their tassels from one side to the other, and I sit in the audience thinking to myself, "I missed it."

With the newfound courage to do whatever it would take to avoid the unbearable weight of missing my kids' childhoods, I got my unemployed ass out of bed, accepted my heroic call to adventure, and began writing the cold open of the next act of my career.

This was the moment I began my pivot towards purpose.

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If you too find yourself lying awake at 2am questioning your life choices…

If you’ve built an entire identity around a dream that no longer fits…

Or if you’ve been forced to pivot because of a world out of control…

I see you. I’m with you. And you don’t have to figure it out alone.

I don’t have all the answers, but I am asking all the same questions you are.