Lena Dunham Instagram – I recently came across this photo of me in my first office. I was 23, and office is an overly fancy term for the dusty cubicle I rented with my babysitting money so I could write, edit and be near the other filmmakers who populated the building (like the Safdie bros, Henry Joost/Ariel Schulman, the Neistats, G Gerwig, but that’s for a book when I’m 88.) It was here that I conceived my first films, squirreled away what I needed to make lo-fi work. I remember carrying so many hard cases of equipment I had to stop every half-block, panting, ankles cracking. If you zoom in on the computer here, you can see I’m editing the script for Tiny Furniture on a boiling day in New York August. Back then I was motored by the bravado of youth and a vague sense that there was magic where I was headed (young, dumb and full of…French New Wave Cinema!) but I was also often scared, self-critical, rife with imposter syndrome. If you had told that girl that someday she’d be passed this post-it by a young woman in New York City, she would have felt- just for a moment- that her compass wasn’t broken (and to the lovely filmmaker who handed me this note, I wish I knew your name! Holler so I can see your work!) You don’t do this job for the affirmation. After all, it’s fickle and uncertain and sure to let you down. But this path has taken me places I only could have dreamed of when I was one of the few young girls in my particular scene trying to make movies (just in my scene- we are, of course, everywhere!) and to know that another woman has enough faith in herself to join the fun makes me well and truly happy. I complain sometimes- about the hours, the politics, the snacks- but it’s a beautiful life.