September 2021
Hello from Orlando!
Well, I’m just getting settled back at home after spending a week at St. Pete Beach here in Florida for the annual writer’s conference I go to called NINC (Novelists, Inc.). The conference has kind of become a tradition, not just for me, but for my family, too. It’s about a two-hour drive from Orlando, so I go over on Wednesday and my family meets up with me on Friday after the kids get out of school. By noon on Saturday, most of the conference shenanigans are over and I can spend a little time with the boys out on the beach. This year, we went swimming, played on a floating raft out in the ocean, and ate snow cones by the pool while watching old men compete for the best bellyflop in hopes of winning drinks and an appetizer at the tiki bar. I really love this annual trip…
But this year was different than most.
Because this year, while eating lunch with a friend I had made a few years earlier, I got a rather ominous text message from someone at the day job. It simply said: “Call me.”
I won’t go into the details, but let’s just say, the times, they are a-changin’. I returned to the table and stared at my plate and told my friend all about it. He looked straight at me and said, “This is a sign, man. I think you’re supposed to do this writing thing full-time.”
I shook my head and looked away and said, “I don’t know, I’m not ready yet.”
“Think about it,” he added. “You get this call today? While you’re at this conference?”
I told him all of the reasons why I can’t do this full-time right now. I told him about the insurance, and the 401k, and the income. “I just can’t do it,” I said. “Not yet, at least.”
My friend said he’d pray for me and hustled to the next presentation at the conference while I went upstairs to call my wife to tell her about the changes that were happening.
Twenty minutes later, I went down to the presentation, but I’ll be honest… the rest of the conference felt very different. No longer was I watching the presenters up on the stage. Instead, I was looking around the large conference room at all of the successful writers, each of them following their dreams in their own way, learning, networking, doing something with their lives, something that matters to them.. and maybe to others.
I listened to the lectures, but I wasn’t really listening. Instead, I was thinking about a quote I’d heard: That which we’re most destined to do in life we’re most often afraid of.
The quote hits home… because I believe it, yet I know most won’t do anything about it.
Why is it that we tend to gravitate toward things that are safe, knowing full well that nothing is ever really safe? And if it is, it’s only for a little while? At what age do we stop pursuing our dreams with everything we’ve got, like there is no Plan B to fall back on?
Is it when we move out from our parent’s house and have to get a job to pay the rent? Or when we go to college? Is it when we get married? Have kids? Or get a mortgage?
Is it when we hit a certain age? When we become jaded with life? When is it, exactly?
When our kids tell us their dreams and what they want to be when they grow up, why do we tell them, You can be anything you want to be, if we don’t believe it ourselves?
I’ve had a lot of dreams in my life. And I did a lot of things people told me I couldn’t do. My guidance counselor in high school said I’d never make it in college. I wonder what he’d think about me not only graduating, but also going on to get an MBA. In 1996, the program director at the local rock station told me he’d never hire me as an on-air DJ. Four years later, he did… and I showed him I could not only do the job, but do it well.
I love proving people wrong. I bet you do, too. But at what point do we stop pursuing our dreams with reckless abandon? Why do we eventually stop believing in ourselves?
I always learn a lot when I go to these conferences.
But the biggest thing I learned this year, which I already knew but had somehow forgotten, is that we only have one life. One chance to be who we were destined to be.
Sometimes life nudges you in the direction you’re too afraid to go in on your own. But the truth is, we’re not alone. There’s always a community of people doing what you want to do. But only you can decide to walk down that path to see where it might lead.
I guess there’s another thing I learned this year:
I still believe in myself. -Ken