The Wednesday Play: Why Not Me?

Hi Playmakers,

Here’s something I’ve learned the hard way: the first person who tells you “no” is usually you.

Before the world has a chance to shut our dreams down, we shrink them ourselves. We tell ourselves it’s too ambitious, too risky, too soon. We lower the bar just a little and decide not to shoot for the stars.

For me, this happened when I was 17 years old. I was in 11th grade and earning the top grades in my high school in my small farm town. The only problem? My mum was a cashier and my dad was blind. As two high school dropouts, they did the best they could, but a college fund was never in the cards for me.

Most people in my town had very different ambitions than I did. While I was watching Shark Tank and dreaming of moving to Silicon Valley to work at Google, most folks were eying up a union job at the local Honda Plant. It worked for them — and I’m glad it did — but it wasn’t for me.