I used to be a hustler. I had a boldness that was indescribable. I didn’t fear much. If you knew me before I had children you know I was different then. I had an “it” thing. If I wanted something I pursued it hard. The ideas were usually only half thought through and I almost always worked it out along the way. Did I fail? Yes. All the time. Did I care? No. Not at all.

Then I had my daughter and the weight of being the woman she looked up to weighed me down. Hard. I started to second guess and doubt every move. She was watching me. What if I failed? I cared more than one person should. I didn’t want her to see that. Instead she saw a person who was a faded legend. Someone who when she got older people would tell stories about and she would never believe them. That hurts because I was a legend and now I am just a wife and mom (on paper at least).

In high school I decided I wanted to get out of there early so I took night school and extra classes so that my senior year I only had to go half a day. The other half of the day I spent working at the Enzian Theater and Florida Film Festival which became my home off and on for going on 20 years. In 1998 I decided that I wanted to do a triathlon and so I started training, and I completed my first (and only) triathlon a few months later. I was dead last, but I finished. After high school I wanted to go to school in New York City to study to be an actress. So I made a list of my top three schools, got on a plane stand by with very little money to my name, lied to NYU and said I was a perspective student so I could crash at the dorms, and boldly walked into each school and told them I was auditioning. Each one let me in. Three of the most prestigious theater schools in the world let me walk in and own it. I was accepted into all three and offered two different scholarships. I quit school a month prior to it ending because I needed an agent to work and only had so much rent left. I walked into an agency and got one immediately. After that I decided I wanted to move to Los Angeles, so I got in a car and drove there. I may have lived in a KOA camp in a tent across from the LA County Fair, but I was there. I wanted to make my first documentary short and I did, in three days. Then I sold it to Current TV. I always wanted to be a programmer for a film festival since I admired the long time FFF programmer Matthew Curtis so much, so I did remote film selection for Slamdance Film Festival while undergoing cancer treatment and taking care of a newborn and toddler. I admire him even more now. I would take cancer treatments again before watching that many bad films at once!

I would say the list of all of the ways I made bold moves and took what I wanted is endless, but it did start to end. The day I met my daughter. The fear of failing her was so powerful. Slowly I got less and less bold. Took less risks and weighed my options and moves more and more. Now I don’t really risk much. I plan. I plan more than one should. I have lists and lists of plans. Dreams of what I will do someday. I don’t tell people about my plans because I fear not accomplishing them and being someone who talks a good game.

I am not someone who talks a good game. I am someone who does great things. Have I failed? Lord yes! Embarrassingly so on many MANY occasions. But it has been a while. I just don’t risk much anymore, so there isn’t much to fail at.