What I Planted Before I Left

I'm writing this from Ocean City, watching a storm roll in off the water instead of sitting in the booth. It's the first time in a while I've been fully out of town during a work week.

And somehow, this has still turned into one of the busier weeks I've had.

Smart Steps to a Tech Savvy Family, my second book with author Sandra O'Connor, dropped early in the week. My 23rd audiobook title. I got word that I've been shortlisted for a project—I'll leave the details out, but it's nice to know that my voice caught someone's attention. "From Diplomacy to Voiceover," the piece I recorded for The Fed Up, is still finding people: it reached over 2,300 people on LinkedIn this week, 93% of them outside my own network. And then, I got a rejection letter for a video game audition.

That last one doesn't sound like a sprout. But 400 people wanted to audition for that role. Seventy-five got an actual Zoom audition. I was one of them. The casting director didn't offer me the part, but he took the time to tell me that making it in the room said a lot about my acting, and to keep going. That's not nothing. That's a seed that didn't become this particular plant, but it's still growth I can point to.

None of it started this week. It started weeks ago — in the booth, recording a book I'd already finished before I left town; in an audition I almost talked myself out of; in a piece I sat with far longer than I expected to. This week is just when it all showed up, wins and losses alike.

That's not how it feels when you're in the middle of it. When you're recording, or auditioning, or writing something that scares you a little, it feels like effort with no guaranteed return. You don't get to see the sprout while you're planting the seed. And sometimes what comes up isn't the plant you expected, but it's still proof the soil is good.

Standing at the window watching this storm, I keep thinking about how much of the work is like that. You do it, you let it go, and you leave town. And then, ready or not, it grows without you standing over it. Like screaming in the void (or a storm).

My takeaway: taking a break from the booth doesn't mean losing momentum. I had to trust that all the work I did in the lead-up to my trip was enough to sustain me until I return.