Voices For All

Heartland Community College offered an interesting class with introduction to voice acting. The fellow who traveled from Miami to give the class (and a host of other identical classes along the way) is one of the three national voices for Verizon. There's never been a better time to break into voice acting. Voice over work is all around us. Not only are they in T.V. and radio, but also in answering machines, grocery stores, video games and a host of other places. The Internet supplies a ton of jobs, and the spread of audiobooks demands talent too. I quickly found jobs that pay $200 for 30 seconds of voice. How to get the jobs? You submit a demo of your voice to the prospective employer. And the work can be done from home, with a simple microphone set-up that I bought at a local music store. A good demo, considering any sound effects and the studio time of an engineer, runs $1,500 (a big investment, but much less than starting up your own Burger King store!). The intro class mentioned a master class, and it sounds like a good deal. In addition to a full day and a half of instruction in a classroom setting (max class size of 14 enables more individualized attention), you get a 2 hour session of 1-on-1 time with the instructor during which time they cut two demos for you. They also provide your own web site. The class is the first week of November, up near where Mom lives. The instructor is Eric Hunt, a member of Voices For All who creates the training (and has a favorable B+ rating by the Better Business Bureau - felt I'd better check). His co-worker Casey Rose (1-518-618-1297) helped make arrangements for me.

Choosing Wisely

"Bill Gates has said that if you took the twenty smartest people out of the Microsoft it would be an insignificant company, and if you ask around the company what its core competency is, they don't say anything about software. They say it's hiring. They know what the scarce resource is." - Geoff Colvin

In business, hiring decisions are far-reaching. And in personal life, what could be as important as choosing good friends? The kind who endure our faults, who strive to improve, who always find ways to be happy, who resist complaint, and who make us better through their example. Friends who get their fun out of commiserating will run a person into the ground, as surely as a river will cut stone. We have the choice to take the high ground by the friends we choose.

Passion

"Because you love what you are pursuing, things like rejection and setbacks will not hinder you in your pursuit. You believe that nothing can stop you!" - Mike Krzyzewski

It's pretty trifling, but earlier this spring I found myself in last place in my fantasy baseball league. With 11 teams above me I would have given up right about then, if I didn't love the game as much as I do. Every day, while those above me were probably losing focus, I waded through free agent players available to be plucked and inserted into my lineup once they got hot. And now just this week I climbed into first place. Now if only I can find something in real life to inspire that same kind of passion!

Getting High On Service

They say that our natural instinct to "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" is an actual piece of hard coding that probably halped our species survive. This "mensch impulse" is reinforced by a surege of feel-good chemicaals (srotonin, oxytocin, and dopamine) that the brain produces when we make ourselves available for someone else. In other words, they give us the wrm fuzzies and boost immunity to stave of illness.

Young King Cole

Cole Hamels was the top pitcher on the World Series winning Philadelphia Phillies in 2008.

Back in high school, as an oft-watched pitching phenom with dreams of becoming a pro athlete, his arm bone suddenly snapped clean through while throwing a pitch.

It took months of healing and therapy, but he returned to the mound sharper than ever.

Past setbacks are your greatest proof of strength. Hold onto them. Celebrate them. They remind you that you can overcome.

Passing Away

"The world is fleeting; all things pass away. Or is it that we pass and they stay?" - Lucian

When I sit to rest on a rock in the park, between the two of us I'm the shadow. How many generations has the rock seen? A hundred? A thousand? Meanwhile I pause, a unique but temporary accessory, an instant's glint within an eternal sunshine.

Picking Pockets

"You owe it to everyone (including yourself) to find pockets of tranquility in your busy world." - Georges Bernanos

In almost every scene of life, even in confrontation, we can allow ourselves to detach from it as if we were watching a show on television. In that moment, we can relax as if mentally stretched out on a sofa, enjoying the chance to gaze with interest and see how things unfold, or to give a quick thanks for something even as simple as being alive.