When Your Dad Wants You To Be A Welder.
Posted by Arsene Hodali in FearTales
Acting School.
The last MAJOR thing I can remember being scared of was to enroll into an acting school and jumpstart my career. Thinking deeper into it, it was actually the fear of poverty. The funny thing is, the thought of being an actor never scared me when I was young. I had been taught this fear, by other people, first person being my dad.
This was back before I even enrolled in high school. After having heard that I chose to become an actor, he thought it was just small talk and told me to reconsider my choice and choose something more “secure” and “stable.” Well, whatever he said went out one ear and right out the other. I was stubborn then, still am now. When picking a couple of high school electives, of course, I had to sign up for a couple of acting classes.
I was going to get my foot in the door one way or another.
When he found out, he snapped and had me transferred to another school and told me I was going to be a welder. I got to the new school and he didn’t even enroll me into any welding classes. So here I was at this new school, lost, stripped of my dreams and any direction, not sure what I was going to do with my life anymore.
Let’s fast forward to high school graduation. A couple of months after graduating high school, my family and lost our place and became homeless. It was rough, eye-opening experience. It forced me to come to grips with my fear of poverty. I was face to face with it, so there really was no running away, this was now my reality. I found that it was really not too much different from the way that I had been living prior to this point.
If you’re living paycheck to paycheck, you might know what I mean.
The only difference now was that after coming off from work, I would have to immediately go out and come up with ways to make more money for food because all my checks were going to the motel room. I came to grips with a couple of things in life, learned to focus on what truly mattered to me and I spent a lot of time in reflection during this period in my life. I was working, had plans to go on to college and was pretty much regarded as a good guy with a good head on his shoulders. As they say, bad things can happen to good people and I felt this was the perfect example of it.
One day while at work, I was thinking about my situation, my life up to that point, what could’ve led me there, what I could learn and gain from the situation and where I might be headed. In a heap of frustration, I had decided that once I got out of the situation, I would start living for me. I came upon the realization that my life wasn’t going well, at all. Not only was it not going well, but I had been attempting to please others in everything that I was doing, my dad especially, and look where I ended up! Not to say it was anyone’s fault, but I just wasn’t happy, I had to reclaim my life. The bad times always hit hard and to the max and I felt that it was time for my good times to become just as intense and fulfilling.
I guess you can say it took a crisis to have me open my eyes and realize I ought to start enjoying life and start living for me, because that incident has helped to shape major decisions in my life.
In 2008, I enrolled in Stella Adler studio of acting and have been pursuing this path ever since.
awesome..nice one i think.
Living for oneself is a good choice one can make i think
Glad you liked it. I like the “FearTale Fridays” series, I see so much potential for it.