This Is How You Fly.

[caption id="attachment_2627" align="alignnone" width="640" caption=""Aerodynamically, the bumblebee shouldn't be able to fly, but the bumblebee doesn't know it so it goes on flying anyway." -Mary Kay"][/caption]

Yesterday was the 13th anniversary of my arrival in Los Angeles, and I took a little time to reflect.  When I arrived, I wasn't even 30 yet, and here I am, knocking on 40s door.  By Hollywood standards, I was too old to just be starting out.  Never mind that I had been doing theatre for 5 years, I wasn't bankable and had a lot of white space on my acting resume.

I didn't know any better.

Nor did I care.

I was going to do "this."

And I proceeded to NOT do it for 4 more years before I got serious, got some intensive training, and got myself into the game.

By then I knew better.  I knew that youth was sought after, and that I may have LOOKED younger than my years, but I wasn't going to "out-23" a 23-year-old.  I heard other people calling other actresses "old," and then realized that I was as old or older than they were.  Same for weight, race, skin color, hair type, height... the voices swirling around me shouted that I was TOO... well, EVERYTHING.

But the voice within me said "That's okay.  I am going to do this."

Having previously sold Mary Kay Cosmetics (ok, I used more than I actually sold, but that's not the point), I knew the story of the bumblebee, who, unaware that he was not aerodynamically built to fly - flew anyway.  I chose to decide that the "voices" didn't pertain to me, and that I was going to fly anyway.

And I rolled up my sleeves and got to work.

Almost every day I hear a story of someone who has been told that they weren't enough.  That their ship has sailed and they weren't on it.  They should have been more attractive, more outgoing, skinnier, more talented, taller, blonder, blacker, less them and more somebody else.

Maybe that's what you were told.

Maybe that voice is yapping at your heels like a hellhound.

Stop running, turn around, and tell that puppy to shut the hell up.  As long as there is breath in your body, you can choose to do what you were created to do.*

You already have everything you need in order to do what you are supposed to be doing.  There are "tools" that would make it more convenient, for sure, but if you don't have it and you can't get it, you don't need it.  Decide to "do this" no matter what.  And then set about the business of getting it done.

--Nicole

*Just as easily as you can choose not to...