Opportunities

GOOOOOOD MORNING! How are we doing? It has been a little while since I have posted, I took a short hiatus for Thanksgiving as well as last week for something other cool things going on in life, but I am back baby I’m back. Oh yes. Back, rejuvenated and ready to roll.

Not a long intro this morning, because I’m just not in a tippy toe kind of mood today. I’m feeling fiery. I feel like going after shit like a pitbull today so that is how this is going to run this morning.

I want to start by telling you a story.

When I was a kid, I wanted to be an actor. It was my dream. I knew early on what I wanted to do with my life and I was committed to making it happen. However, as we all know, wanting something isn’t always enough.

We need a path to getting it. Well, before long my first big opportunity presented itself. It was a talent contest, of sorts, called ProScout. Long explanation made short, there was a small conference held in Toledo, Ohio, where I grew up.

It called all young actors to show up and, depending on your personality, looks, etc. they would move you to the next round with the end result being that a select group of young actors would perform a 30-second monologue at an event in Columbus in front of hundreds of talent agents from across the country.

I showed up to this event in Toledo, along with my mother, thanks mom, love you! I joined at the end of one of five lines. When I arrived at the front I came to a panel of five individuals sitting on the other side of the table.

I had no idea what was going on, so I walked up, shook the guy’s hand and introduced myself. After a brief conversation, he handed me a playing card. The king of diamonds.  I then sat down with the couple hundred other kids in the room.

Finally, a lady with a microphone announced that anyone who did not have a playing card with a king on it was dismissed and anyone who did have a playing card with a king on it was to stay. It turned out, we were the select group being sent to Columbus a couple of months later.

Fast forward to the day of in Columbus. The conference was held in a hotel conference room, and it wasn’t a Days Inn. This was a monster room that held at least 3,000 people. Why do I know that? Because there were 3,000 people in attendance between parents, event staff and talent agents.

Now, let me remind you, the idea was to go on stage, in front of these 3,000 people and perform a 30-second scene from a movie. I was ten years old at the time.

Talk about nervous. Talk about stepping out of your comfort zone. I had never spoken to more than two or three people at a time, and now I was supposed to act in from of several thousand? You can imagine the butterflies were flying. I will never forget that feeling.

However, as I said earlier, I was fully committed. So, I walked on stage and performed the scene from The Goonies where the Fratelli’s were trying to put Chunk’s hand in a blender so he spills the tea on every naughty thing he’d ever done.

The scene involved fake crying and groveling. I received a round of applause, like all the other kid actors, and walked off stage. Then, we all waited until everyone had finished, at which time the announcer would call out which agents were interested in talking with which actors about representation.

Three agents wanted to speak with me. Two in Los Angeles and one in Columbus. I spoke with all three and agreed to representation from the agent in Columbus. Long story short, from there I acted in a bible school video, a trailer for a novel, booked a Verizon commercial that never did air, and starred as the lead in a short film that went on to win several awards at a prestigious film festival in Germany.

There are stories behind all of those experiences, but the point is that if I had run away from the opportunity because it was scary or uncomfortable, I never would have realized my dream of being an actor.

Now, I did not continue down that path for various reasons, but I achieved something that I had my heart set on. I did something that most people with never do and it was the experience of a lifetime, and it was all possible because I stepped toward the thing that scared me, not away from it.

Why do I tell this story? Because I think new opportunities are an important thing to discuss being that they are something that happen to all of us at some point or another.

Whether we know it or not, there are always opportunities available to us. Some more obvious than others. It is up to us to be on the lookout and open to seeing them when they present themselves.

Sidenote, because you know I always have to throw it in there, this is my opinion. You do you boo boo. Whatever you think is best, but this is what has worked for me in my life and the way that I see to be the best way to go about things.

Phew. Now that that’s out of the way.

Having a new option come into your life can be overwhelming or threatening. Why? Because it is offering a different avenue for your life. As human beings we naturally reject change. We don’t like it. It forces us out of our comfort zone and make us do things that make us nervous, anxious or scared.

The thing is, nothing good happens without sacrifice. We have to do things that we don’t want to do in order to get the things we DO want. That’s the sick game of it all. However, it is the reason why doing uncomfortable things are sometimes worth it. Because they sometimes lead to what we really want.

Again, this is all opinion, but this is my post on my page so I am doing things my way!

I say go for it. Whatever it is you want go after it, but mainly, keep your eyes open. Be willing to listen. Be willing to just sit back and watch the things that are going on around you because there may be an open door that you just haven’t seen yet.

That open door might be the key to everything you want to make out of this life. Never close your eyes. Never stop pushing forward and never stop looking for opportunities that could change your life!