It’s hard to take a scary chance, but success can be breathtaking

By David McElroy · February 15, 2021

I was very confident, but I was also nervous. It was hard to say which feeling was stronger.

I was sitting in an auditorium on a late Saturday morning about 16 years ago. The auditorium was full. Maybe 600 people? 800? I don’t recall. We were waiting for a block of short films to start showing at the Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival in Birmingham. Most people were there to watch films. I was there to finally find out whether an audience liked my own first film.

My companion that morning was a girlfriend with whom I had a complicated relationship. Things didn’t end well for us, but I’ll always be grateful for her support that day.

I was nervous by the time the lights dimmed for the first short to start. My film was about the fourth in line, so I sat through several others first. I had never been to a film festival before, so I had just assumed the films would be good. I couldn’t tell anybody — because it would have sounded prideful — but I thought the other films were mostly terrible.

My film finally started. I held my breath. Would they laugh? We got to the first punchline. The audience roared with laughter. I was so happy that I wanted to cry.

I told you last night about the demons that pursue me when I try to do creative work and reach to achieve a dream. Tonight, I want to tell you about the flip side. When you can find enough motivation to push the demons away — and you do something that you’re proud of — the feeling can be magical.

I’ll never forget what it felt like to see my short film with a crowd for the first time. It was a great crowd, because it was supportive and maybe even easily amused. The festival had a question-and-answer session featuring directors after the block of films and I can’t remember anything about that. But I do remember I had trouble getting out of the place — because people kept stopping me to tell me they loved my film.

Even though I had tried to be completely confident before the session started, I think Gina knew I was nervous. She had a long history as a stage performer — acting and singing — so I think she understood. I’ll always appreciate one thing she did while the films were still going on.

During the film that was after mine, she quietly reached into her purse and found one of her business cards and a pen. Then she slipped me this note.

“I think yours went over brilliantly,” she wrote. “You should be very happy about it. I hadn’t watched it in awhile and it looked great. Writing was by far superior to the rest.”

I’m thinking about that tonight because I happened to find that old business card with that note. Even though she and I haven’t spoken for many years, it still makes me feel warm and happy inside. I’m glad I happened to save the note.

That short film was very flawed, of course. I really didn’t know what I was doing at the time — and I learned a lot from the experience. I could make far better work today — if I’d just allow myself to do it.

Taking creative risks is scary. I explained some of those fears — and some of the obstacles that come with them — in what I wrote last night. But that’s only half the story.

The other half is the thrill of success — and that’s what I’m remembering tonight.

I remember the joy from that first showing. I remember the joy of going to my first out-of-town festival — in Myrtle Beach, S.C. — where my film won “best in show” for the festival. It wasn’t just the best short. The judges thought it was better than any of the other features in the festival — all of which had far bigger budgets and far more experienced directors.

I remember the happiness and feeling of victory when my little film was accepted to festivals in Canada, Australia, England and New Zealand, as well as festivals all over the U.S. And I remember the amazement every time I would get a phone call or email from a festival director to tell me that my film had won an award at his or her festival.

At several minor film festivals, it was voted “audience favorite comedy.” Even after all these years, that excites me. It thrills me. It makes me want more.

I was brutally honest with you last night about where I’ve been lately — dealing with the shame and fear that try to stop me from moving forward. All of that is true.

But I have to be honest and say that the upside to taking a creative risk and winning is something like few other things in life. I’m eager for that sort of thrill again. I just hope there will be someone with me when that happens who can appreciate the win as much as I will.

Share on Social Networks

If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

Related Posts