Most of you know I”ve been looking very hard for a new job. The search has not been successful, in that i don’t have a new position yet. But it has been very rewarding in many ways I didn’t expect.

I was listening to an interview with the animator for a bunch of grown-up comedy cartoons. He talked about how he had not done so well in school, but at one point, he met a guy.  A guy who talked to him and hooked him up to become a professional animator.

And when he met the guy, he never looked back. The interviewer was asking if he had any doubts about the value of animation.  But this guy, Loren Bouchard, said he knew that this was his chance. He knew that animation was his chance and this was what he better get really good at it and stay good at whatever it was.

That is exactly how I felt about my career in videoconferencing. When I got the internship, I knew that this was my chance. I had nothing nothing nothing going on. The best I could have expected was a long slog through state college at the most ordinary and unmarketable major–ENGLISH–and get in line with all the other ordinary-at-best people who graduated, but I’d have student loans.

But I got this chance. And I took it. I did not attend the state university I had been accepted to. I took a scary risk and went to find a job. And once I found it I dove into it, because this was my chance.

I was so hungry and desperate then. I didn’t have anything going on.  And this showed up. I had to grab on and never let it go.

And, to be fair, it took me pretty far.  I should remember. It was my big break, as tired of it as I am now.

Sometimes that sort of thing happens. It takes awareness, I think. To know that