The Dream Career
Ever have a Dream Career? The place where everything you’ve done in life seems to fit perfectly into place?
I have one. Well, several.
When I was a child into my pre-teen years I always dreamed of working for Walt Disney and Buena Vista Films. I always dreamed of working at the studio and involved in the production of a film like Mary Poppins. By my early teens I dreamed about working as a cameraman for ABC Wide World of Sports too. One of those huge Norelco Color Cameras high above the Indy 500 or at the Kentucky Derby. In the early 1970s I dreamed of working for a studio like Lorimar and on a television series like THE WALTON’S. By the mid 1970s that shifted a little to the Lorimar Series DALLAS. Just the publicity photos of a set at Southfork and a crew around a Panavision 35 mm Camera gave me hope one day I’d belong to such a show and in some capacity on such a crew.
In my late teens I envisioned being an air personality on a variety of radio stations and later as a copywriter/producer in some television stations too. At least I got to live out those dreams from 1975 to 1997. I never made it in a Top 10 market but in some small to medium markets I became a big fish in some of those smaller ponds. And life was very good.
It all started to grind to a halt and some challenges in 1990. Having ridden the boom to bust of the oil economy in Odessa/Midland and after going as far as I could in the 1970s of El Paso I made it to the Big Top Circus of Dallas-Fort Worth when responding to an ad in Broadcasting Magazine with KXAS NBC 5. Back then it was part of LIN Broadcasting and somehow I made the cut from the hundreds that applied to the top 20, to the top 10, the top 5 and the final two. It came down to equal candidates where a determining factor would award the job of Assistant to the Creative Services Director and be in charge of News Promotion promos. The deciding factor came down to education and the other candidate with a BA in Journalism from TCU was offered the job. It hurt it came down to a degree I did not have but I found encouragement when the Creative Services Director asked if he could pass my resume along to their sister station in Austin Texas, KXAN NBC 36. And after another three months of a similar process I found myself again in the top final two candidates…and to the same conclusion. Looking to God I wondered if it were time to cut my losses in Midland/Odessa and go back to college. So in the summer of 1990 in a very hot July that year I returned home hoping I’d be the Prodigal Son.
I was the prodigal to my parents. They always loved me and celebrated my accomplishments in the 1980s including seeing me in a Vaudeville Melodrama Theater troupe in 1988 and 1989. In many ways I had become like one of my mentors, Howell Eurich in El Paso who worked for the CBS station and Turn of the Century Melodrama Vaudeville Theater group. But El Paso was not as open in arms to the career I hoped I’d have while going back to school. There turned out to be a lot of humble pie to swallow and though I worked for the University in several of those years I also did gain a foothold on a News Talk AM station in 1991-1992 and another AM station board shift in 1995 to 1997. I completed the BA in 1994 and surprised myself with a starting a Masters that following semester.
I did reach for the golden ring of the Merry-go-round in 1994… but the doors did not magically open then either. I visited Dallas Fort Worth the Spring of 1994 taking up an offer to tour Southwestern Theological Seminary in Fort Worth and Interview with the Southern Baptist Radio and Television Commission too. It was a great tour of an incredible radio and television production studio but I was a decade too late as it was being downsized while Southwestern had just undergone a purge and hostile takeover of two warring denominations. As much as I loved the DFW market it did not part like the Red Sea for me to pass through or enter. And I went back home to UT El Paso where I did at least complete the Masters Program.
In the mid to late 1990s I did reach a few more dreams. For one I became the Creative Services Director of UPN 48 KZIA, one of a dozen stations in the Lee Enterprises broadcast and newspaper group based in Davenport Iowa. I had two great years in management with KZIA until the FCC mandated the switch from Analog to Digital and a hard series of deadlines towards HDTV. Lee opted to sell their stations and instead focus on the Newspaper and Print Industry, so in a red hot minute like a flash my career ladder was blocked and I had to scramble what next to do. The answer came by way of a neighboring company as a small business contractor for the defense industry in housing and utilities contracts. I went from a 25k a year television station to a 33k a year Senior Video Producer with a roughly 100k studio of digital and nonlinear editing equipment. When I left in 1999 I topped out at $45k a year and the future looked bright. Starting my own production company I had a dozen local clients and just won a subcontractor award of contributing to three PBS documentaries. Equaling my income in 1999 and 2000 while completing the Masters I thought the sky was the limit. And I was … wrong.
Business and the economy started to slide in 2000. Just about the time of the fall elections and the hanging chads of Florida the country was in a state of change. The death nail or blow came on September 11th of 2001 and the country changed forever. It was as similar as Pearl Harbor had been for my parents in the 1940s and for my industry it was a terrible impact few of us will ever forget. I did graduate with the Masters Degree in May of 2001 but as if it were the magic or golden E ticket to the big rides at Disneyland it was anything but rising to the cream of the crop in the first decade of the 2000s in DFW. For a while like the fictional character of ‘Flounder’ in Animal House I wondered if it were my cologne, deodorant, or breath. It was neither but it was another challenged economic cycle and one I thought for sure I would have found favor and Teflon to weather it through.
I applied at least twice to three times a year with every major broadcast station in town for nearly five years running. Up and around the dial from Fox 4 KDFW, to NBC KXAS 5, ABC WFAA Channel 8, KTVT CBS 11, KERA PBS 13, to KDAF WB 33. I even attempted to break into the networks such as Trinity Broadcasting, Texas Cable News, and Daystar too. I applied with major ministry names such as James Robison, TD Jakes and others but doors were just closing and personnel were being pink slipped in favor of computer automation on one hand or downsizing on the other hand too. Corporate Video giants like Tandy, JC Penny’s, Texas Instruments, Pier One, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon to name a few first cut back, then sent out for freelance before mothballing studios or getting out of media production once and for all. Advertising agencies merged or went out of business as independent producers who once earned a six figure living found themselves in a limbo contest with clients challenging ‘how low will you go.’ The lowest I went was to take on a handful of insufficient funds clients and giving away too much work for darn near minimum wage.
At one point I turned to hourly wages going to work for retail giant Costco albeit in their Major Sales Department as a salesman of HDTV rather than producing for content for them. And a six weeks holiday job in 2007 became a steady part time source of income and health insurance benefits lasting to the present in 2014. I did find temporary success in grant funding as a grant writer and then producing for nonprofit organizations in both museum welcome center theaters, kiosk exhibit displays and MP3 audio tours but very little work to sustain my company in a challenged economy. By 2011 I looked towards writing for publishing as my next career field and nearing the goal of being published no win 2014 I find myself in my mid 50s wondering if there’s not one more round to fit into the Dream Career if but for the very last time.
In some ways the economy has resurfaced once again in 2014 with both posted openings of opportunity at Lockheed Martin in Fort Worth and the Studios at Las Colinas in Irving through both CRM Studios and working in conjunction with Glenn Beck’s Mercury Radio Arts companies. Or so I though would be the level playing field. Just today I learned from a friend with CRM that ‘everyone who has breath has applied for the Production Coordinator job at CRM.’ And now a week later after applying with Lockheed Martin I’ve not heard a pip or a peep. Suddenly something full time at Costco looks more doable and publishing for Love Inspired Steeple Hill books may be more of a reality than finding an offer to join a top production studio.
Casey Kasem, when he hosted AMERICAN TOP 40 in the 1970s and 1980s offered a trademark closing statement for his listeners and musicians alike: “Keep your feet on the ground but keep reaching for the stars.” And so my feet, planted firmly on the ground doesn’t mean I’ve not attempted to win the right job in two major employers studios or productions. Soren Kirkegaard, a Danish Philosopher from the 1800s once wrote: “Life can only be understood backwards; Unfortunately, it must be lived out forwards.” Kirkegaard is right in both thoughts. Life can only be understood looking back – and going forward requires faith, hope and determination to face the future with tenacity to fight life through.
Another poet put it this way: “Great it is to dream the dream, when youth presents at the starry stream. But the greater task is to fight life through and say at the end, the dream was true.” Many attribute that to the late John Osteen, father of Joel in Houston Texas. However, it belongs to American Poet Edwin Markham (1852-1940). Regardless who quotes it ‘the greater task is to live life through,’ and by that, at present I believe its working for a winning, successful and team built company. I could be wrong with that estimation stuck in 20th Century thinking and a mold where one works for a company and thrives. Glenn Beck had a writer on a week or so ago who suggests ‘our future is in our hands.’ James Altucher and his book CHOOSE YOURSELF: BE HAPPY, MAKE MILLIONS, & LIVE THE DREAM.
This is the synopsis from Amazon: “The world is changing. Markets have crashed. Jobs have disappeared. Industries have been disrupted and are being remade before our eyes. Everything we aspired to for “security,” everything we thought was “safe,” no longer is: College. Employment. Retirement. Government. It’s all crumbling down. In every part of society, the middlemen are being pushed out of the picture. No longer is someone coming to hire you, to invest in your company, to sign you, to pick you. It’s on you to make the most important decision in your life: Choose Yourself.
New tools and economic forces have emerged to make it possible for individuals to create art, make millions of dollars and change the world without “help.” More and more opportunities are rising out of the ashes of the broken system to generate real inward success (personal happiness and health) and outward success (fulfilling work and wealth).
This book will teach you to do just that. With dozens of case studies, interviews and examples–including the author, investor and entrepreneur James Altucher’s own heartbreaking and inspiring story–Choose Yourself illuminates your personal path to building a bright, new world out of the wreckage of the old.”
Speaking for myself – I’m not sure what the right path is. Part of me trusts God and the other part questions God at the same time. All I know is that I would somehow like to work for a client that compensates me professionally in line with both a BA, MA and 35 years of experience. I hope to graduate beyond Part Time Under-Employment and find the square or round peg I am into the square or round peg of the board. It may come from writing and moonlighting at Costco or it may come from the right broadcast job and triple to quadruple of what I slave myself for now in manual labor retail. It reminds me of the 1950s Milton Bradley game called MYSTERY DATE and the advertising slogan in the 1960s “Will she win a dream date or a dud?” I wonder if its the same roulette wheel or something God can use to open doors to what our hearts desire the most.
What it reminds me about is a conversation between Orson Wells and Herman J. Mankiewicz at the premiere of Citizen Kane in the movie RKO 281:
“Herman J. ‘Mank’ Mankiewicz: Was it worth it?
Orson Welles: I don’t know. I can’t imagine doing it any other way. I suppose it’s just my character.
Herman J. ‘Mank’ Mankiewicz: It won’t be easy having made your masterpiece at 26.
Orson Welles: Is that what you think – that I’m just going to burn out at the ripe old age of 26?
Herman J. ‘Mank’ Mankiewicz: All stars burn out Orson. It’s the flame that counts.
Orson Welles: [Toasting] To the flame.
Herman J. ‘Mank’ Mankiewicz: To the flame.” (RKO 281 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120801/quotes)
I wonder if I flamed out in 1986 at the age of 27 when I ended my tenure at KQIP in Odessa, or the age of 29 in 1988 when KTPX went into Bank Receivership. Was it when I left the Permian Basin in 1990 after the unsuccessful moves up to NBC 5 of NBC 36 in 1990 at the age of 31? Or the culmination of the BA in 1994 at the age of 35? Or at the end of KZIA in 1997 at the age of 38? Or when I left MEE Incorporated in 1999 at the age of 40? One thing I do know, little beyond ages 41, 42 and 43 meant much after the end of 2001. And though I served my parents well in their crisis needs in end of life issues to 2007 its been both heart breaking and aching to succeed at something yet once again.
I’m 54 now in 2014. 55 in August. Like some 110 million Americans I’m Under-Employed, at far less than the cost of living and unsure if it will be publishing as in Harlequin Love Inspired books or another publisher or something with Lockheed Martin, CRM Studios or perhaps Glenn Beck’s Mercury Radio Arts companies where I may shine like a star in my field, with my education, to my potential once again. I can see it sometimes. Like the Apostle Paul stated “through a mirror/glass, dimly.” And yet I sometimes wonder if I should just toast to the Flame?
Stay tuned… the answer will or will not come soon. You’ll find out the moment I do.
Steve