The Spirit of Bounce

 

This post took - I kid you not -  almost a full month to write. I am actively trying to exercise those quick twitch creative muscles and get a heavier amount of writing and creating in versus all of my curios distractions, like learning Unity/Unreal Engine and exploring virtual movie experiences. I’m determined to finish this one because first of all, I had an original point, but also, I realize I’m still unpacking lots of emotions and detoxing. Writing always gives me the mental knolling that gives me perspective, further proof that I’m writing this mostly for myself. Twenty plus years of journal keeping taught me a lot. This is just the latest attempt to get back in rhythm.  

Let’s go back a month to the start of this: 

There seems to be two huge paths in the entertainment industry, one is a straight but extreme lane in which you pick one thing, rarely diverge from that goal, and spend every waking moment on that focus. That's  Kobe Bryant, Prince, Malala Yousafzai, and in my experience, the a cappella phenoms Pentatonix, Jason Derulo, my friend Drea Rose, and the incredible perseverance of Streetlight Cadence. Singular in purpose, unimpeachable work ethic, and an intense drought of distraction. I saw many of them at the beginning of their careers, nervous but undeterred by obstacles or a plan B, and say what you will about the way the rest of the country sees LA; There is a fight in the people of this town for the things we believe in that, against all odds, results in some beautiful art being made. None of these people ever worried about being famous.  Destiny seemed to be an undeniable thing in measure for all of them,  and we will look back at some point and know that it was almost prewritten to play out this way. 

The other path, the one I think most people take, is one of exploration and discovery, which means you're going to flat out meet not only resistance, you're going to meet rejection, that if you know how to use it as fuel, it will be a powerful form of redirection. For myself, I think I decided long ago that I wouldn't let loss or abandonment define me, but I'll be completely honest: For most of my adult life, I didn't have perspective on it. I have had chapters in my journey driven by self-doubt and self-rejection, and I was the worst and first critic that made major changes in my life. I have, in fact, completely abandoned the arts because I didn't credit myself with the talent to try. In high school, I was the musician. The rest of my group had the filmmaker, the actor, the comedian, and...I guess this makes sense, but the one who was the  Poli Sci major has had the most stable life and ended up as the most consistent friend. Okay, stable? Has anybody had a stable life in the past decade or so? I went into college as a music major and quit after two semesters because the hunger for understanding music theory was smothered by a lack of connection between the curriculum and passion for expression and performance. I dropped out altogether and got a corporate job. That was the first time I left it. 

Over the years, I have lived in very different worlds, mostly by chance and not by choice, slowly learning over time to look at the direction I was pulled or pushed in rather than the direction I came from. It's only at this later stage in life that I've begun to look back, and I'm super proud of my story. Looking at this  diorama from one angle in the simplest terms, I've been thrust out by layoffs, by one firing, by flashpoints of burnout, an aftermath of goodbyes scattered across a timeline that might not be compelling as a hero's story. Seeing this story from another angle, I built a thriving and active theater company. I grew an entertainment program in one of the busiest walking spaces in the city. I brought love, compassion, and understanding to a sacred space in downtown. All of these elements are things people previously brought to those areas, but I feel like I brought change to those spaces. I left them different than the way I found them, and I like to think I did it for the better. 

I didn't allow myself to be discarded, I looked for places to make an impact, and I found them. I've learned over time to be thankful for the people who let me go or understood when I had to leave - even the one who fired me for whatever his reasons were - as all were catalysts for change in my life, not completely unlike that college girlfriend who once said that if she stayed with me she knew I'd dedicate everything to her and family, but she didn't want to be the one who would prevent all of the things she thought I'd do someday. I am positive she could not have predicted the actual outcome, much less my outlook on life right now. There's no panic, just gratitude, no nostalgia, only belief that I'm going to find something to be fascinated with and an irrational thought that I was not made to blend in. The fire is still burning, as I tell my friends when it comes to describing my outlook on career and art. 

But let's be absolutely real. Rejection is rejection. There's no way to put a bow on it. People will plot against, covet your attention or successes, downplay your skills or talent, make things unusually difficult for you to function, breathe, or thrive. The shock of change will wear off and evolve into a new reality quickly, but how do you deal with the people who root for your failures, make deliberate moves to hurt you, the ones who look for you to break down, admit defeat, to give them a reason to point and get others to see what they see, even when they can't quite define what it is they don't like about you? What does a career change you didn't initiate really say about you? Are the worst things you're thinking right, and based on reality? 

I used to joke that I had a lot in common with my haters: Our favorite subject was me. That wasn’t entirely accurate, though, because as a direct result of surviving bullying throughout my grade school years, I place much more emphasis on others than I do myself. I’m definitely not out for the selfies, the grandstanding, the loud, boisterous credit broadcasting. Not only did all of the bullying give me a special empathy and focus on people who feel discarded, singled out, persecuted, or targeted, but my early years in theater inspired me to leave no doubt as far as what I would be known for. I wanted action and activity to be my business card, my brand, my reputation. I wanted to fill in the gaps and do the ugly work, and it became such a practice, by the time I got to Universal, some people absolutely hated the “above and beyond”. It was uncontrollable. It was seen as performative. Still, I survived almost 13 years, and despite the corporate and personal pressure from bullies in adult sizes, I had some beautiful connections with artists and various people in the mix. 

In this most recent chapter, although I’ve made some peace with the usual sources of negativity and never responded in kind, it’s taken some time to recover and look back over the whole journey, and it occurs to me that all of these changes I’ve been through, sometimes at the hands of people who wanted to affect my path as a threat to their own, has given me a huge foundation of experience I probably wouldn’t have gotten otherwise. For every negative experience, I was propelled into a brand new atmosphere of learning and creativity, a chance to be resourceful, to use my previous experience sometimes in unusual ways. I have worked with more than a handful of people with narrow experience and little interest in learning anything new, but that wasn’t me. In a world of balls, some people opted to be bowling balls, and I wanted to be made of rubber. 

This is exactly what’s moving this time of recovery and searching for something new so optimistic. Rejection just means that you can’t grow in that soil, that you can’t thrive in that atmosphere. Superman, after all, would have been a normal person on Krypton, but because of our sun he was endowed with his super powers. 

Walt Disney was fired from the Kansas City Star because he “lacked imagination and had no good ideas.”

Thomas Edison was fired from multiple jobs because his experiments were disruptive to his job performance.

Oprah was fired from WJZ-TV because she was "too emotionally invested in her stories." 

Lady Gaga was fired from her first record label because she was going to take too long to create her debut album. 

The list goes on: Hugh Jackman, Julia Child, Robert Redford, Steve Jobs, and so on. 

Discovering a dead end doesn't mean this is where you'll get all of your mail forwarded. This dark wall at the end of the hallway isn't where you belong. Just because one or two people don't like you or deem you don't fit into the plan, not only are they redirecting you, they're rooting themselves in the maze their attached to. It's just basic physics, provable with diagrams and math and a brief but powerful PowerPoint, if you care to make the effort. This is, at least, what I'm going to tell myself until I land in a whole new place to explore.

And that's what I hope for you. 

If life was a sport, Giannis Antetokounmpo put this idea of success and failure in perspective.

"Okay, do you get a promotion every year on your job? No, right? So, every year you work is a failure, yes or no? No, every year you work towards something, towards a goal, which is to get a promotion. To be able to take care of your family, to be able, I don't know, provide the house for them or take care of your parents. You work towards a goal.

It's not a failure. It's steps to success. There are always steps to it, you know? Michael Jordan played 15 years, won six championships. The other nine years were failures.

That's what you're telling me? No, I'm asking you a question, yes or no? Okay, exactly, so why are you asking that question? It's a wrong question. There's no failure in sports. There are good days, bad days. Some days you are able to be successful, sometimes days you're not. Some days it's your turn, some days it's not your turn.

That's what sports are about. You don't always win. Some other people are going to win, and this year somebody else is going to win. Similar as that. We're going to come back next year, try to be better, try to build good habits, try to play better, not have a ten-day stretch with playing bad basketball, and hopefully we can win a championship.

So, 50 years from 1971 to 2021 that we didn't win the championship, it was 50 years of failures? No, it was not. It was steps to it, and we were able to win one. Hopefully, you're given another one."