This life doing voice work, whether as a talent on the air, or doing voice-overs; this life is, for most of us, not filled stability or predictability. So, I’m very grateful to my family for being so patient with me. Even though I certainly haven’t always deserved their patience.
What follows are the thoughts of my daughter, as she remembers them, from back when she was quite young. I think she was 6 or 7 at the time this took place. (She is 22 now.)
“I was in a recording studio with my father. This was long enough ago that soundproofing was still done with egg crate foam on the walls, which I enjoyed running my hands over. My dad was talking with and doing an interview with another man, I don’t remember who it was. The table was dark wood, and I remember looking down at it and seeing my bag of skittles, bright against the table. I remember thinking how good the skittles would taste, but that I was concerned that the crinkling bag would make too much noise, because my dad was recording an interview with this man. I had had it impressed on me very thouroughly that I had to be very very quiet when daddy was working, and I did not want him to be unhappy with the noise I was making. When they came to a stopping point, I very quietly asked my dad if I could eat my skittles, and was allowed to do so. I just find this story funny, because even at that very young age, I had a sense of what I was or wasn’t allowed to do in the sound studio.”
It can be kind of painful to realize that we get so obsessed with our work that we ignore our children and spouses. But, painful or not, it’s worth remembering…and worth leaning from.