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Posts by Tony Collins

Tony Collins is a documentary filmmaker, educator, and writer whose work explores creativity, caregiving, and personal growth. He is the author of: Windows to the Sea—a moving collection of essays on love, loss, and presence. Creative Scholarship—a guide for educators and artists rethinking how creative work is valued. Tony writes to reflect on what matters—and to help others feel less alone.

Tony Collins's Website

Vulnerability Is Powerful But Not Always Safe

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“Vulnerability is not oversharing. It’s sharing with people who have earned the right to hear our story.” ~Brené Brown

Earlier this year, I found myself in a place I never imagined: locked in a psychiatric emergency room, wearing a paper wristband, surrounded by strangers in visible distress. I wasn’t suicidal. I hadn’t harmed anyone. I’d simply told the truth—and it led me there.

What happened began, in a way, with writing.

I’m in my seventies, and I’ve lived a full life as a filmmaker, teacher, father, and now a caregiver for my ninety-six-year-old mother. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve …

Planning Without Panic and Learning to Live in the Now

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“You can plan for a hundred years. But you don’t know what will happen the next moment.” ~Tibetan proverb

Some days it feels like a fog I can’t shake—this underlying fear that something painful or uncertain is just around the corner.

I try to be responsible. I try to prepare, make good choices, take care of things now so the future won’t unravel later. But beneath that effort is something harder to face: I feel helpless. I can’t control what’s coming, and that terrifies me.

Maybe you’ve felt this too—that tension between doing your best and still fearing it’s not …

Can You Live a Meaningful Life Without Being Exceptional?

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“The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.” ~Alan Watts

As I enter the later stage of life, I find myself asking questions that are less about accomplishment and more about meaning. What matters now, when the need to prove myself has softened, but the old voices of expectation still echo in my mind?

In a world that prizes novelty, speed, and success, I wonder what happens when we’re no …

A Case for Joy in a Monetized World

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“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.” ~William Bruce Cameron

My gardener and I were talking the other day—his English broken, my Spanish worse—but we found a way to connect.

He told me about his eight-year-old son, a bright, joyful kid who loves baseball. The boy wants to play. His mother wants him in tutoring. And somewhere in that gap, a bigger question emerged: what matters more—discipline or joy?

I didn’t plan to give advice, but it came out anyway. “Let him play ball,” I said. “Let him be part of a

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Beyond the Yips: How to Reclaim Your Creative Confidence

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“You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face.” ~Eleanor Roosevelt

There’s a quiet moment before the spotlight hits when everything in your body wants to run.

Your hands tremble. Your voice tightens. Your breath shortens, even though the room is still. You love what you do—you’ve trained, practiced, prepared—but suddenly, it’s like someone else is in your body. Your skills vanish. Your confidence implodes.

That’s the yips.

And if you’re an artist, musician, writer, teacher—anyone whose work lives in public view—you’ve probably met them too.

The First Collapse

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Walking My Mother Home: On Aging, Love, and Letting Go

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“To love someone deeply is to learn the art of holding on and letting go—sometimes at the very same time.” ~Unknown

Nothing has softened me—or challenged me—like caring for my ninety-six-year-old mother as she slowly withdraws from the world. I thought I was strong, but this is a different kind of strength—one rooted in surrender, not control.

She once moved with rhythm and faith—attending Kingdom Hall for over sixty years, sharp in mind and dressed with dignity. She’s a fine and good Christian woman, often compared to Julie Andrews for her beauty and radiant grace. But now, she rarely gets …

How to Coexist with Fear (and Spiders)

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“If you are willing to look at another person’s behavior toward you as a reflection of their relationship with themselves rather than a statement about your value as a person, then you will, over time, cease to react at all.” ~Yogi Bhajan

Several years ago, I hiked into the remote forestlands of Bukidnon, a mountainous province in the southern Philippines. I was there to make a documentary about the Pulangiyēn people, an Indigenous community living in the village of Bendum. No roads led there. No running water. Just a winding trail upwards, a slow-moving carabao pulling my camera gear, and …

How I Learned to Be Present—One Sound at a Time

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“Time isn’t the main thing. It’s the only thing.” ~Miles Davis

When I first read that quote, it hit me right in the chest. Not because it sounded profound—but because it was something I had been slowly, painfully learning over the course of a very quiet, very long year.

Time used to feel like a race. Or maybe a shadow. Or a trickster. Some days, it slipped through my fingers like water. Other days, it dragged me along like a heavy cart. But always, it was something outside me—something I was chasing or trying to escape.

I spent much of …

To the Dreamers Reading This, I Want You to Know…

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There I was, eating cereal and watching a CNN documentary about Kobe Bryant—yes, I mix deep life reflection with Raisin Bran—when his old speech teacher said something that made me pause mid-chew. He described Kobe’s approach to life as giving everything—heart, soul, and body—to his craft. No halfway. Just all in.

I sat there thinking, “Yes! That’s it!” That’s the very thing I try to convey to my students in class, usually while making wild arm gestures and accidentally knocking over a marker cup. I believe in that philosophy with every fiber of my chalk-dusted being.

High Risk, Deep

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The Power of Silence and How to Really Listen

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“The silence between the notes is as important as the notes themselves.”  ~Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

When I was younger, I thought knowledge was something you could capture—something you could write down, measure, and prove. I believed that to understand something, I had to explain it. And for a long time, I tried.

But then, life—through film, through music, through long conversations with people whose wisdom couldn’t be found in books—taught me something else: the most powerful truths don’t always come in words. They exist in the space between them.

I learned this lesson in the mountains, where the sky stretches …