You have to play this game with fear and arrogance.

That is perhaps my favorite line from what may well be my favorite movie, Bull Durham. When Kevin Costner said it in the movie, he was talking about baseball. I, however, have often found it applies equally well to other areas of my life.

For example, my first career choice: Radio. I can clearly remember the day I decided I wanted to try it. I was getting ready for school, listening to the local morning show and I thought, “Pfft! How hard can that be?” I started working at the local radio station when I was 16 and still in high school (We broadcast at a whopping 1500 watts on the FM side. Oh, and it was FM mono with this hellacious buzz caused by the fact that the owner piggybacked the FM signal off of the AM transmitter. We were a force to be reckoned with). I started off running Royals games on the weekend and moved to the afternoon music show for the kids, which I did during my senior year of high school. The funny thing about it was that the guy who owned and ran the station showed me how to run the sound board one afternoon, then said, “Play whatever you want. I’m going in the back to take a nap.”

I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. So, I just sort of winged it. I took things I’d heard other DJs do, and did them in my own way (Little did I know that this is the age old way in which all radio people discover new bits and features for their shows. They steal them from jocks in other markets.)

I eventually moved on to a large market where I learned a lot of the mistakes I’d made in my first job. The hindsight was sort embarrassing and I guarantee that no tapes of my first radio job still exist (though I do have a few from when I was still just a pup). When I left my last radio job in Fairbanks, my Program Director told me: “I knew this was too good to be true. People with your talent and your experience don’t often end up in Fairbanks.” That was probably the nicest thing any of my many radio supervisors has ever said to me. But I won’t let it go to my head. Like many things in life, radio is a fickle mistress. Unless your name is Howard Stern or Ryan Seacrest, it doesn’t matter what you did yesterday. It’s what you do today that matters.

What I learned from all of that is that radio, like baseball, is a game of fear and arrogance. You live your life knowing that no one is better than you and that six months after you leave, no one will remember your name.

Though I’ve said this before in my life, I think I’ve finally left radio for good. Primarily because I have faith in myself and I think I can make this writing thing work. Yet as I embark on this, I feel once again like I am 16, sitting in a control room surrounded by equipment that I have just the vaguest idea how to use. But I have some ideas about what I wanted to do and a burning desire to do it. I still feel that I am feeling my way along in the darkness, knowing my goal is at the end. I know I’ve already made a few mistakes.

I recently read a piece in which another author was complaining about authors who … complain about other authors (no irony there) when they themselves have accomplished nothing. The author was very negative about those who did this, but I can understand the mindset. If you don’t think you work is worth being published then why should anyone else?

I think I can do this.

Fear and arrogance.