David Sedaris’s essay “What I Learned,” originally published in The New Yorker in 2006 and later collected in “When You Are Engulfed in Flames,” contains this bit of brilliance:
“Weird doors open. People fall into things.”
I love these two sentences so much.
As we were driving with our tour guide, Victoria, in the Cotswolds, she asked me how I became the thing I am today:
Author. Consultant. Keynote speaker. Executive coach. Storyteller. Comedian.
It’s always a long story, often beginning on an evening in July of 2011 in a New York City theater, but sometimes going as far back as the fall of 1982.
It’s a tough one to tell.
But since we were driving through the British countryside, from one picturesque village to another, I had time to tell Victoria the story. Elysha chimed in to help, and Victoria asked lots of questions, so by the time we arrived at our next destination, I had managed to give a decent account of my strange and unexpected career journey.
But that’s unusual. I don’t usually have the time to explain the long and winding road that led me to where I am today, despite people’s genuine curiosity about my life.
Sedaris seems to have captured the essence of my career path (and my life) in just a few words:
“Weird doors open. People fall into things.”
That’s it, really. A small choice is made, followed by another. Hard work and the desire for excellence are required, of course, but so, too, is timing, coincidence, luck, a chance meeting, an open mind, a timely assist, a calculated risk, and more.
It’s hard to imagine that the decision to tell a story in a New York City story slam in July of 2011 might change a life forever.
Impossible to imagine, maybe.
But weird doors open. People fall into things.
Over the course of our day in the Cotswolds, Victoria also learned that I was an elementary school teacher for 27 years, a wedding DJ for 25 years, a McDonald’s manager for a decade, and the author of seven novels and three books of nonfiction.
All of that likely contributed to where I am today, too. Each contributed a part and helped me do the things I do today.
But it certainly wasn’t planned. It wasn’t envisioned or intended or planned in any way.
It’s why each fits Sedaris’s brilliant, seven-word theorem:
Weird doors open. People fall into things.
Not as satisfying an answer as Victoria received as we drove through picturesque farmland and past ancient limestone walls, but a quick and easy way to explain my career path, my life journey, and maybe life, if you allow yourself to fall when life gives you the chance.
