Award ceremony with Mayor Tim Burchett
It’s surprising to me that even when I plan to succeed – I’m still surprised when I do? I realize ‘success’ can be defined many different ways. For the purpose of this particular scare crow contest, success was defined as winning first place and having a great time doing it. I whole heartedly planned for and wanted to win the $100 first place prize and I definitely had a great time creating ‘Say What?’, so why was I surprised when I won? As I wondered, I thought about the whole process, and I began to see a pattern emerge.
Success #1 – I started the contest by deciding I wanted to make my scare crow as much as possible from re-useable items and made the plea on face book for clothing etc,. to be donated. “Random” things were offered and when I went to pick them up they revealed a much need theme. But what if no one responded to my face book request? Eeek – awkward 🙂 What if no one participated?
Success #2 – Finding that perfect plastic ice cream scooper at the thrift store to make a great mic – once wrapped in duct tape with a plastic bag balled up in the scoop part and colored in with a sharpie. What if I hadn’t found anything to make a mic? What if I hadn’t ‘seen’ a mic when I saw the ice cream scoop? I can’t have a voice over scare crow with out a mic? It’s like a chef with no food!
Hmm, how do I get the body to stay on the boots? This is when I realized it’s not going to work as planned
Success #3 – Being able to salvage my complete failure of engineering design on the fly and come up with something that at least stands, and is still standing over two weeks later?! What if I had given up? What if I hadn’t been able to find a workable solution? Granted the new solution didn’t show off her sassy boots 😦 but sometimes function beats fashion!
Success #4 – The magnificent response in voting- wow! But what if no one voted? What if everyone thought someone else would vote, and no one actually did?
Ahhh now I see it! The reason I’m still surprised is because at any one of those moments – plus several others – it could have failed. I think the reason we are surprised when we succeed, even after we plan to, is because inevitably there will be moments when failure looks like the only viable option. Yet when we persevere, get creative, and ask for help when we need it – we can turn the inevitable ‘failure’ before us into the hoped for success.
BTW – I never knew Mayor Tim Burchett is so dang funny? 🙂 He had us all laughing for the entire award ceremony.
P.S. – Yes, plans are already in the works for next year’s contest, it will be the main character of the King series trilogy that I wrote!
Gretchen Paxton Voice & On-Camera Talent 