Chasing your dreams

You are never too old to follow your dreams. You're never too stuck to get unstuck, and every day is the perfect day to begin again. I'm really excited for you. You have no idea what the next 5, 10, 15 years has in store for you - where you'll be, who you'll be. Tomorrow, you'll be a different person than you are today, and that's perfectly okay. You are on the most exciting adventure. It's called your life. And you are mighty fine captains. I want you to come aboard my ship. I want to share my journey with you, and it's my hope that part of my story will speak to you or inspire you in some way, and if not, you'll have about 15 minutes to pretend to take notes on your iPhones while you feed your Candy Crush addiction. I'm on level 275. What are you on? Okay. I was an odd child. An awkward child. I was a "the world revolves around me and my performances" child. I was a "you're going to pay me to listen to me play the Kleenex-box guitar" child. I had a very successful detective agency. I was a Swedish gymnast who could not speak English, and I was visiting the country - oh yes. And every night, I would stand on my bed with my hand over my heart, and I would sing the national anthem to an ever so pleased audience of stuffed animals because I wanted to be ready for the day the Blue Jays called and needed me to sing at their game. I was performing right out of the womb. I'm sure probably before. If it could be read, it could be sung. If it could be sung, it could be danced. And oh, if it could be danced, it could be turned into a show that I was going to take across the country. The world was my stage. My vision was clear. I was doing what I loved and what came natural to me. And I proclaimed to do this for the rest of my life. Now, there were a few speed bumps along the way. My overactive and unrelenting imagination landed me in the principal's office more times than I care to disclose. I probably shouldn't say that here. And I was the worthy recipient of the report card comment I know all too well, "Katie needs to focus more in class." Now, none of you have gotten that, right? No, I don't think so. A good outlet for my excessive energy and social "awkwardness," as the teachers decided, was sports. And I played hard. I played every sport. I threw javelins, I smashed birdies, and I was good, and I fit in. I never went to the same elementary school for more than three years, and by the time I graduated high school, I had been to seven different schools. You can imagine how hard it is to make a core group of friends when you're always the newbie. I always felt a little bit on the outside. So, sports saved me. It's like the one place I belonged was in my running shoes. I spent the better part of two decades trying to fit into a social and educational system, and it hurt. I'm not saying the educational system failed me. That could not be further from the truth. I failed me. I didn't realize it at the time, but I was trying - I was trying to fit into a circular spot when I clearly was a square. By the time university was over, that big green button that says "start life" was there, and I ran over like everyone else and I pressed it, I buckled in, and I took in the scenery. And the joy of technology and amazing, you know, selfies of olden days. Three years ago, just three years ago, my days looked very different. I was an elementary school teacher. I'd been teaching for 12 years in Ottawa. Every day, I packed my lunch with five pieces of low-fat turkey deli meat, one fat-free yogurt, one apple, and I ate it every day at 9:45, 11:05, and 2:10. I taught seven subjects a day, day in and day out; I coached; I ran workshops for the board; I mentored student teachers - everything. People knew me as a respected leader and a generous colleague, and I loved that. I loved teaching. I loved it. It was my life. It was me. And not only was my professional life booming, but so was my personal life. I had a solid relationship, a big house, big backyard, a whatever-you-call-it, extra-VIP cable package with a slightly overcompensating 60-inch TV. I was hosting dinner parties for friends and hanging skeleton lights above my door for Halloween, and life was moving forward as it was supposed to. My family was proud, and I was happy - until I wasn't. Behind closed doors, I started to detach from my life. I couldn't explain my distance. I put a brave face on for my students and the rest of the world, but inside, every day I was growing more and more sad. I spent a fortune on self-help books and workshops and techniques to snap me out of it, and every night, I would lie in bed and stare at the ceiling and say, "Please give me the answer as to why I am unable to feel content when nothing is wrong." I felt guilty for not being in love with my life. I felt ungrateful. I felt spoiled. One of the workshops that I took was with a lady by the name of Barbara Deutsch, and she talked to me about my pilot light. She said, "All of us have a pilot light, and it burns right in the center of us. You have it too. When you're doing what you love, it burns bright, it fills you from your feet to your head. But if you're ignoring your calling, your pilot light starts to dim until sadly, one day, it could even go out." What I realized was that my pilot light was on the brink of extinction. I was terrified to discover that I was just putting in time in my life. I had no consciousness of the time or any memory of any enjoyment of it. I looked at the calendar, and, "Oh my gosh, it's February. I swear I was wearing a sundress yesterday." Or, "Oh my gosh, I'm 35. Where did the last 10 years of my life go?" It was an innocent question from one of my grade-three students, eight years old, that prompted me to leave my classroom and reignite my flame. I was teaching a unit on Martin Luther King Junior's "I have a dream" speech, and the classroom was buzzing, and the kids were making posters, and it was all about dreams and hopes and aspirations. One of my little ones came up to me and said, "Miss Drummond, what's your dream?" I'm the one who's asking the questions here, kid. I said, "Well, I have always wanted to be an actress." She just looked at me and she said, "Well, why aren't you doing it?" Eight years old. If you could insert the record scratch sound effect in my life, it would be there. Time stood still. I call this my fork-in-the-road moment. Huh. So, I now had two choices, right? I could stay the current path, the known path, the path I knew that was safe. Many people have taken this path. I know where it leads. I know there's no dangerous drop off at the end, that I'm going to drop into the abyss. It's a good path. See how padded down it is? Lots of people take that path. Or I could take that path. Now that path is dark, and it's scary. I have no idea where it leads. There could be bears. There's probably poison ivy and a hundred other things I am most definitely deathly allergic to. And you know, it probably ends right there because I don't think anyone ever takes that path. Nope, nope. That's crazy. I took that path. That's where my dream was. Now, this is the part in my life where I expected a marching band, like, fireworks and streamers and "Hey yeah, you lived happily ever after." Well, my "Beginning again," as I call it, looked a little different; not quite what I expected. I cried. I cried for days when I decided to leave my classroom. But I compare it to - if you've ever been to an amusement park, and I know most of you have, and you see that ride in the distance, that rollercoaster, "Oh, I am going to tackle that thing, you know. Yep." And the day has finally come: you're tall enough. You've reached that mark. You race to the line. Your heart is in your throat. You get in. It starts to click click click click click click click - "I don't remember it being that high. Oh, that's a long way down." And at that precise moment, you are a hundred percent certain that your seat belt is the only one in the ride that has not locked. Right? It's everything. It's fear, it's excitement, it's everything in unison. You know, my family was so worried, they sat me down, and they had an intervention. And they said, "Kate, we know you think you know what you want, but what happens if you get cancer and you can't afford your medical care?" Now that just goes to show how deeply their fear ran because cancer runs in my family. Most dearly to me, my grandmother passed away from cancer. They were so worried. Because who does this? Who gives up a life of security, at the age of 35, to be an artist? They didn't understand, and that's okay. It was not their journey to understand. I sold everything I owned, packed up my truck with my dog and moved to Toronto. Actually, I moved to a basement apartment in Ajax because that's all I could afford. I got a serving job. I scrubbed toilets for minimum wage to make ends meet - not exactly what I thought chasing dreams was going to look like. I knocked on doors and dropped in on agents, and I even had one agent say to me, "You are simply too old to be dreaming of being a movie star, honey." For the first time in my life, I felt like I truly had nothing. Everything I knew was gone, and I was in foreign waters. My relationship had long since ended. I was traveling the road alone, and there was nothing to define me except me. And I was not entirely sure who that was, and that scared me. When the phone didn't ring and the auditions didn't pan out and I had days and weeks and months of feeling like I had absolutely no purpose, I had time to get reacquainted with me. I think it started to happen that first time I took myself out for dinner and I said, "Nope, just a table for one, please." I started to get to know who I was. Not myself, the athlete, not myself, the teacher, just myself. And then out of all of this nothingness that I had felt, I found abundance. It was like I struck gold - all these discoveries. I realized that instead of being the captain of my own ship, I had been trying to fit the mold and the expectations of others for the better part of my life. That instead of defining myself by the quality of my character and the capacity of my heart, I was using titles and accomplishments and awards and medals. And I had this revelation that I was in a very dark habit of hiding the things about me that I thought were ugly or unattractive. Hiding. And then all of a sudden my view of success started to change. It wasn't booking gigs or my name in lights on marquees that I was striving for. It was validation from within. You know, I'll tell you, these days, my biggest success comes from a day where I just let myself be me, where I can silence those voices in my head, that might be in yours too, that tell you you can't, that you shouldn't, or that you should. My biggest success comes from a day where I untie those "pretty" ribbons that I've used to cover up ugly bouts of depression, crippling insecurity, and instead of judging them, I'm using them as an opportunity to learn about myself and connect with others who are going through the same thing. Honesty is a powerful thing. I was led down this path for a reason. I know it. I don't know if being an actress is my destination or simply a detour on my journey. I could end up back in my classroom. That would be great. Or, as a wise friend once said to me, "Maybe my classroom has just gotten a lot bigger." Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter what my title is, my job is. It doesn't matter what your title is, your job is. What matters is that I have a better understanding of who I am as a person. This journey has helped me to unbecome the things I wasn't so I could be who I was meant to be. I'm 38 years old. This journey surprised me more than ever. I had no idea that the decision to change my life would actually change my life. I want to be there when you guys come to your fork in the road. I want to be standing there, you know, and, "Yeah, choose that one. Go, go." I want to be your cheerleader. Just keep this in the back of your mind: It does not matter when people are questioning you or judging you, or trying to deter you from following your dream. It's most often coming from a place of love. And their resistance to your leap of faith is often because they've been afraid to take their own. I wish you the best of luck on your journeys, captains. The world is a beautiful place because you are in it. Thank you.