The Joy of Dreams Not Coming True
Picture this – I was in my early 20s, waiting in line with a buddy at an open casting call in NYC to audition to be a VJ on MuchMusic.
My turn came, I said hello to their famed VJ Juliya, who directed me to where I should stand, and then I read the script, adding in a bonus factoid about the artist because hey, I was already a music journalist, and actually knowing things should score me extra points, right?
Well, I didn’t get the gig, and neither did my buddy. Quite frankly, I have no idea if anyone got the gig.
Fast-forward a bit, and once again I’m waiting at an audition, but this one was a professional one. AOL was looking for a host for a music video countdown show, and I was one of the people selected to come into the city to read from a teleprompter, to see if I’d be a good fit.
I knocked it out of the park. I did it perfectly, and the entire crew said I was the only person to nail it on the first read.
I’d actually read from a teleprompter at one point back in college, so I came in knowing what I was doing.
Despite crushing the audition, I didn’t get the gig. Instead it went to a celebrity (although I can’t, for the life of me, remember who it was).
Once again my VJ dreams were dashed, but in retrospect, I think that was OK.
I’m not saying it wouldn’t have been fun to be a VJ, which is something I, and pretty much everyone who grew up watching MTV, dreamed of doing, but when I look at my life, I wonder where I would be today had I ended up being selected for one of those VJ gigs?
I probably wouldn’t have been able to spend nearly as much time on my freelance work, and that work, along with this blog, expanded the breadth of what I write about, and greatly improved my writing, and interviewing skills, as well as my overall knowledge.
I doubt I would’ve been able to cover my local indie scenes in the way I have, and that’s where I’ve met so many of my friends.
Covering those indie scenes also netted me an invite onto a radio show back in the day, and that invite turned into five years on the air, meeting one of my best friends in the world (what’s up, DJ Halo), and sharing a show with him until they finally kicked us off the air in favor of NPR.
Would I have attended grad school had I been a VJ? I have no idea. I actually chose to go to grad school after not getting a totally different gig (writing for the WWE), but not only did I earn my master’s degree, it was in grad school that I met two more of my best friends in the world, who I can’t imagine my life without.
Do I become such an avid digger through used vinyl and CDs if I’m a VJ, or does that only happen because I love finding things to write about? And if I’m not a digger, does my upcoming book, One Hit Wondering, happen, or do I never have the idea for the column in the first place?
Then there’s the potential horror of what my life could’ve turned out to be once the VJ gigs ran dry. Would I have gone back to writing, or would I have sought out any way possible to maintain notoriety? My God, I could’ve ended up in a CarShield commercial attempting to cling to a final few seconds of fame. Nobody wants to see that!
So while having the dream of being a VJ, and going after that dream, was fun, I know I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be in life – 25 years deep as a music journalist, with my second book on the way.
Not every dream has to come true, and sometimes a dream not coming true can lead to much better things you never even considered.
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