Sometimes opportunities come from the strangest places.
Let me explain what happened. This past week, I posted my blog, and as usual, people commented on it. One guy then commented and said “Sent you a friend request” with another comment along the lines of “Ahem—respond to my friend request.”
Now, the insistence of these messages made me nervous. Being a cautious person online, I am hesitant to add Facebook friends without having met them in real life. Or on a Zoom. Or whatever.
Basically, I want to know you’re:
1. a real person
2. not a total whack-a-doo who I’m going to have to block next week, and
3. not a scammer.
So, my first thought on getting that message wasn’t “YAY! ANOTHER FRIEND!” but more like “Ugh, what does this person want?”
(If you’re reading this, Joseph, forgive me. It’s not personal.)
I approved the request, ready to block at the first signs of DM weirdness.
A DM did arrive, but it said “I have a question for you, if you have a minute to chat” and a phone number with a 612 area code (Minneapolis).
Being a generally nice and curious person, I’m sure I would have replied anyway, but the area code caught my attention, as I lived in Minneapolis for a LONG time, so I gave him a call, at this point pretty sure he wanted to ask me some sort of voiceover-related question.
Right off the bat, I asked about the area code, and found out he had lived in Minnesota before, but had moved to Florida recently. We chatted about general voiceover stuff, and then he got to why he’d actually wanted to talk:
He mostly does audiobooks, and an author he works with was looking for someone to narrate three books from a female perspective. He thought of me.
Now, we don’t know each other at all. But because of my blog, he thought of me. And listened to my demos. And reached out.
Will anything come of it? Who knows!
However, what really matters is this:
A door of possibility has been opened because I didn’t let my presumptions get in the way of staying open-minded and curious.
What’s that? Where does Santa come into this?
Oh, yeah, somewhere during this conversation, he mentioned that being Santa was one of his main things. That detail stuck in my brain a little bit, and I meant to ask him about it and forgot.
A little while after our conversation, I sent him a DM:
“This might be a long shot, but did you happen to do a screenplay reading for a guy named Tim during a blizzard back in 2004?”
Turns out, Santa and I had met before.
During a blizzard, in approximately February of 2004, I drove out to a Minneapolis suburb to do a public reading of this guy’s screenplay without pay, but with the promise of a free meal after.
I remember very little about the screenplay, the other actors, or the meal, except that one of the people at it was a Santa. Small world, man.
And another tale of strange opportunity comes from that very same day.
At the time I did that reading, I had lost my part time office job, and was just working part time at a restaurant. I was having a pretty rough go of things, tbh. In fact, my mom thought I was nuts to go do anything for free, and told me I should be looking for a job instead.
Ten months after the reading, I had a truly terrible day where it was pouring, I was running late for work, I discovered my car had gotten towed, this guy I’d been seeing came to take me to get my car and broke up with me on the way to get it, and I was also overdrawn at the bank already and got even more overdrawn paying to get my car out of the tow lot…it was the WORST.
Me, the next day
The next day, I was in a better mood and the sun was out. I was riding my bike when out of the blue got a phone call from an unknown number. I picked it up (back then, I did that—answered calls from unknown numbers).
“Hi Billie, it’s Tim.”
“Tim…?”
(I was in a show with two Tims at the time, and this didn’t sound like either of them)
“You read my screenplay back in February.”
“Oh, yeah…right.”
“And I remember afterward you said you were looking for a job.”
“I mean, that was ten months ago.”
“Well, are you still looking for a job.”
Me, pausing awkwardly, then replying meekly:
“Yes.”
“I think I have the perfect job for you!”
Unlike all the times I can count where someone has tried to rope me into their MLM with the same exact line, this actually WAS the perfect job for me, at least at the time.
That was how I ended up working as a receptionist at BBDO Minneapolis for four years. All because I did an unpaid reading of a screenplay in the suburbs during a blizzard.
So, the world is small, and opportunities don’t often come from the places we expect them to…sometimes they incubate for months, or decades.
And sometimes, Santa delivers them in June.