Saturday, May 19, 2012 # 10:07 AM
Where there's a will, there's a way
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| The Great Wall of China |
Where there's a will,
There's a way.
When I was a kid, my parents didn't have a lot of money - especially for your basic white, middle-class, Americans. We weren't living out of our car, but there were many days when I had oatmeal for breakfast as well as dinner and had one pair of school shoes and one pair of sneakers to my name that were supposed to last for two years. Luckily, I liked oatmeal and I pretty much reached my full height and shoe size at age 13 so the shoes were able to last the two years.
It was kind of frustrating for me, however, because I was a kid with big dreams. It didn't help that most of my friends came from wealthy families. They had pools in their back yards and went to Switzerland on vacation while I used the rafters of our unfinished basement as monkey bars and floated on inner tubes down the muddy creek behind our home. My father used to tell me, 'where there's a will, there's a way. If you really want something, you will find a way to get it.' He wasn't talking about anything illegal, of course. He was talking about thinking outside the box to find a creative way to achieve your dreams. In school, we studied amazing feats of achievement like 'The Great Wall of China" and the pyramids of Egypt and I learned that seemingly impossible things can happen with planning, patience, and sheer will.
If human beings could do amazing things like that maybe I could accomplish some of my dreams. After all, I didn't exactly want to build a 500-foot-tall monument to myself. I wanted simple things. For example, we had an amusement park down the road from my house. I could never afford to go there except when they had 'Report Card Day' where they gave away tickets for good grades. So when I turned 13, I applied to work there. I got a job attaching strings to people's wrists for special events and later, at age 17, I was able to operate some of the rides. The hours were long, but I was surrounded by the sounds and sites of the park and on rainy days when things were slow, I got free rides on the merry-go-round.
I'd always wanted to work in show business. Although I was ridiculously obnoxious as a young child, I became very shy as a teenager. Way to shy to try out for school plays or choir. The force was strong within me, however (yes, I went there) and it pushed me to search for other ways to get involved. I looked for ways to work backstage and continued to do so after I graduated from college. Every chance I could, I worked for free to learn more about every aspect of television and theatre. I interned at a television station for minimum wage to help pay for college. I stage managed community theatre productions - one after the other. After a while, I realized the people on stage were just as nervous and anxious as I was about performing and I tried it. Soon I was singing and dancing all over the place. Another check off my proverbial bucket list.
I'd always wanted to travel, so with a little money saved up, I applied for some post-graduate work at a school 3000 miles from my home, packed my VW Baja Superbeetle and left for the West Coast. I wound up not attending the school but found a cool job working with a design firm and building a life here in Washington State. Check. Started my own successful business with money I borrowed on my credit card. Check. Sold that, then started two more. Check. And check. All the while I was able to continue to do some work in theatre and films and writing stories, ( http://theponymanmovie.com/cast.html )and (http://winkingkatbooks.com/). Double check.
I didn't mean for this blog entry to wind up so autobiographical, but I wanted to illustrate that the advice my father wound up to be true. I've checked off so many things on my 'to do' list of life by just finding some way, any way, to make them happen without money or connections. Though it often meant entering through the back door, I still got into the house. Now that I'm older and hopefully wiser, I know that I may never realize the grandiose dreams of my youth (unless I live another fifty years) but in small, satisfying ways I've seen most of them granted. Thanks for the advice, Dad.
Labels: achievng goals, acting, books self publishing fiction writing travelers' society, bucket list, children's theatre, novels, positive advice, time travel, writing
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