Voices.com is working on an updated and improved web site. They’re asking for suggestions on the Vox Daily blog. Here’s your chance to let Voices.com hear your voice on the subject.
Blog
Some good words about training
Over at the Ask the Voice Cat blog, you’ll find some good comments from Mark Cashman about training for work in voiceovers.
Where do you have to live to be successful?
Joe Cipriano answers this question in detail in his latest blog post. These are words from one of the most successful voiceover people in the United States. But, more importantly, there words from a genuinely nice guy, who’s telling it like it is.
Here are a couple of key paragraphs…
I always tell people who ask me if they should move to Los Angeles or New York for voice overs to only do so if they have a job waiting for them in the new location.
And…
Too many people come to Los Angeles with no job and a dream of acting or getting into voice overs and find themselves struggling to pay the grocery bill. All this does is make your chances for success in the business even slimmer. No one…NO ONE…wants to be around, let alone hire, someone who is DESPERATE for the J O B. Do not have the stench of desperation follow you into auditions and interviews.
Read the whole thing. Please.
Being There
If you have 3 minutes to read something that will help you remember the things that are truly important, pop over to Kara Edwards-Suchan’s blog and read this.
And since she mentioned it, if you haven’t made up your mind yet about joining us in Las Vegas for the V.O.I.C.E. Conference, I hope you will. If you can’t, you can’t. If your hesitation is about whether it will have been a worthwhile expense, I can’t answer that for you; but I know it will be for me.
I hope I get to meet you there at the end of March.
Thinking about rates
My friend Brian Haymond has posted some thoughtful comments about how to set rates for voiceover work.
The lessons are there…you just have to watch for them
My friend Adam Creighton has written some thoughtful comments about watching someone obviously struggling with something significant, while at the same time, giving everything he had to the moment.
I encourage you to take a moment and read. I think you’ll be glad you did.
Some things are just wrong (updated)
I’ve written a number of times here about the many things I’ve learned from Dan O’Day. Just yesterday, one of Dan’s free email newsletters arrived that had such a powerful commentary in it that, even though it doesn’t speak directly to the world of voiceover, I thought it was something you should get a chance to read. So I wrote and asked Dan for permission to republish his commentary here. He has graciously agreed. What follows is Dan’s commentary, complete.
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*THE INEVITABLE RESULT OF THE “LET’S DEBASE OUR LISTENERS” RADIO PROMOTION MENTALITY*
I was not planning to write about the recent tragic result of a radio station promotion in Sacramento. (If you are not familiar with it — which must mean you are outside the U.S. — do a Google search for “sacramento radio contest” — without the quotation marks.)
My personal response to it is very strong, and this Letter is meant to offer constructive approaches to creating and delivering good radio. It is not intended to be a soapbox from which I declare my values and beliefs.
But as I contemplated what transpired, I realized that at its core is an issue that long has bothered me about the promotional mindset of many commercial radio programmers. In fact, I wrote about this at some length as far back as 10 or 15 years ago.
It’s an approach to station and program promotion which, at its core, is fundamentally and fatally flawed.
I’m referring to all the stations that conduct “What would you do for _____” contests.
The stations that dangle a prize in front of their listeners, offering it to the person who is most willing to suffer humiliation for the sake of “winning” it.
What other profession thinks it’s good business to subject its most enthusiastic customers to discomfort and ridicule?
What other profession gleefully engages in such foolish, juvenile, and sadistic behaviors toward its customers?
Whenever a radio station or program offers a prize to listeners who agree to embarrass or degrade themselves, the unmistakable message is:
“We are big and powerful. You are nothing. If you want to win our favor, you must demonstrate how powerful we are by humiliating yourself.”
That type of radio station is nothing more than a petty dictator, constantly needing to be reassured of its own importance by belittling its “subjects.”
Think of the western movie cliche of the town drunk being forced to dance or sing a song or crawl along the barroom floor before being tossed a coin to fuel his alcoholism. Guess what? It’s never the good guys who exploit the town drunk for their own amusement; it’s the bad guys!
What would you say if your small child came home from school one day and told you a bigger classmate had declared that any child who wants to play in the sandbox first has to drink so much water that he wets his pants?
You’d say that other kid is a pathetic, nasty bully.
In a business that lives and dies by its relationship with its customers (listeners), does it really make sense to be the bad guy, the bully?
It’s not just poor judgment by some radio people that led to a woman’s death this month. They simply did a bad job of conducting a type of contest that has enjoyed industry-wide approval for years.
Let us imagine that no one died. Still, the show hosts *laughed* at the fact that the woman reported feeling sick. The physical discomfort of the contestants provoked *glee* from the air talents.
The woman complained of feeling sick!
Why didn’t they call a doctor?
Why didn’t they drive her to a hospital?
Why didn’t they care??
Has radio lost its conscience? Its soul? Its humanity?
If so, why would any decent person remain in this business?
What other profession *tries* to make its constituents physically ill?
In a world beset with pain and fear and suspicion, what other profession *endorses* the debasing of its fellow human beings for the aggrandizement of the company?
“Well, Dan, what about TV shows like ‘Fear Factor’? They exploit the discomfort of their subjects.” Yes, they do. But those TV shows have no relationship with the audience. And they don’t have an F.C.C. license to serve their community.
Not only are such promotions cruel; they’re also stupid.
This particular morning show was given a Wii to award as a prize. Some genius at the station thought, “Hey, ‘Wii’ and ‘wee’ sound alike. Let’s make the contestants hold back their ‘wee’ for as long as possible!”
And, presumably, others at the station laughed and applauded such creativity.
But despite the auditory similarity between the prize name and the euphemism for urine, exactly what does urine have to do with a video game?
Nothing. But apparently that never occurred to anyone at that radio station.
And if it hadn’t ended tragically, you can bet this “clever contest” would have been trumpeted from the pages of various radio trade publications and emulated by other, equally callous programmers.
If you read the news stories, you probably saw mention of a college student who died from a similar “prank” a couple of years ago. What was the context of that teenager’s death?
A fraternity hazing. A “trial by fire” which deliberately sought to create great discomfort for the victim.
Is that what we’ve become? Immature, irresponsible, sadistic fraternity brothers who equate our fun with the suffering of others?
Two children lost their mother. A man lost his wife. Two parents lost their daughter.
Forever.
And given our industry’s steady slide into the muck of “wouldn’t it be funny to torture someone who needs the money or who desperately wants the prize,” such a fatal misadventure was inevitable.
Have we become so beaten down by consolidation, monetization, and the stress of keeping our jobs in a downsized environment that we have lost our humanity?
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From The Dan O’Day Radio Programming Letter (http://www.danoday.com/free).
Copyright 2007 by Dan O’Day. Reprinted by permission of author. All rights reserved.
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(Update: You’ll find Stephanie’s passionate and thoughtful response to this post in full, on Vox Daily, here.)
One of the keys (updated)
The other day I was digging through the blog archives at my friend Dan Nachtrab’s site and came across this thoughtful and well written post from some time ago. It’s not long, but well worth a moment of your time.
Update: Dan was part of a meeting of the minds among 3 of us voiceover guys when we all got together for lunch in Central Ohio recently. He’s posted about it here.
A word of congratulations
My friend Joe Rodriguez has just landed a very cool bit of work in the world of Pokemon. You can read about it on his blog, here; and an update with more information on the VO-BB, here.
Good for you, Joe. And may much more success follow.
Focus and facets
In a recent post on her blog, Kara Edwards examines some of the many things that fascinate her. One of her key fascinations is working as a voice actor, but she has many other interests, too.
I am a multifaceted woman. I am a voice actor, a television spokesperson, a writer, a producer, a gardener, a scrapbooker, a painter, a daughter, a sister, a friend, and a wife. I pray often. I fall down a lot. I am a terrible speller. I record voice overs from home, and I travel half-way across the country to bring characters to life. I am also an amateur photographer. I sell stock photos online.
Kara looks around her and wonders how other people do it…
I see so many talented people in the world, men and women doing the exact job I do- and they seem to have it all together. I’m assuming they’ve been given some Divine advice I missed out on.
The key word in that paragraph is “seem.” They seem to have it all together. One of the deadliest traps in life is to compare ourselves with someone else. There are few pursuits more fruitless and even destructive.
Focus is a good thing. Here’s how I understand focus: Pouring energy into our central passion. My friend Kristine Oller has helped me understand that we can, in fact, successfully have lots of fascinations. We just have to learn how to organize them around our central passion in life. Drop those that don’t move us forward. Concentrate on those that do.
May all the facets of your life reflect your God-given passion.
Prospecting wisdom
Karen Commins has written another excellent article about how to exercise wisdom as you deal with your clients and especially your prospective clients. It’s well worth your time.
Actor’s Tool-Kit #2
ACTOR’S TOOL KIT #2
ACTING LIKE YOU’RE A BUSINESS
by Bob Fraser
OUR REAL BUSINESS
Too often we actors get so caught up in the sub-atomic details of our ‘inner lives,’ our insatiable desire to perform, the lengths to which we will go – to satisfy that itch, our financial distress, and our recent lousy experiences with the business – that we tend to neglect our REAL interests.
Take it from an old fish – who has traversed these waters for 4 decades – in real life, it is an absolute necessity to view your acting career as a business. A small business to be sure, but one that has the real potential to grow into a rather large small business.
And, as naturally as putting on weight follows Krispy Kremes and Coca Cola, we must conclude that in order to have a successful small business, we are probably going to have to learn some skills that will help us in … ‘Anyone? Anyone? – Bueller?’ …
BUSINESS.
It is very important to really understand the concept that your business is very much like any other small business. The first concern of business is to develop a large group of satisfied customers.
Here’s where some actors come a cropper. Other actors, production companies, agents, managers, casting folks … they are the suppliers, sales people, distributors, co-contractors, and marketing people. My friends, they are OTHER businesses, with whom you hope to do some joint ventures.
These other show biz folk are NOT your customers. The actors’ customers are called “the audience.”
Forget this (or argue with it) at your own risk.
CUSTOMER BASE & PUBLIC RELATIONS
The bigger the customer-base we bring to the table, the more our business is going to flourish. Which brings up the second rule of sustaining a “going concern:”
Keep improving the product. You are the product … the rest is self-explanatory.
Public relations, sales, advertising and referral business contacts are four fundamental areas that also must be attended to. These things are what bring you new business. They are all important to sales. You will probably have to start out doing these things on your own.
Public relations is mainly about being nice. Charming. Memorable – in a good way.
SALES
When it comes to sales, here are a few important concepts:
Be dependable. Why do you think you hear “It’s dependable” on so many commercials? Dependable (on time, off book, in the zone) is a big part of the sales pitch.
Deliver the goods. Delivery is another big advertising pitch for good reason.
Be easy to work with. This is a good beginning, but the key phrase you want attached to your efforts is: “A JOY to work with.”
ADVERTISING
Since advertising is a scientific enterprise, your headshot and resume (and your online presence) can be tested for effectiveness – so you should test.
For instance, direct mail advertisers (who mail unsolicited sales pitches) consider 3% a minimum effective return. It follows that we should consider our unsolicited direct mail the same way. If you are not getting called in 3 times for every 100 headshots (or other mailings) you send – maybe it’s time to try another headshot or mailer.
Test. Which means you have to keep accurate records. Like sitting down and counting and listing and math and stuff. I know – yuck. But if you don’t do it, who is going to do it for you?
Referral business contacts. This is the sole reason to act without getting paid. Student films, equity-waiver, and actor-collective productions are okay, IF you are meeting and working with people who are better than you are. If you are the best in the group, it’s probably time to move on.
The best way to make business contacts is to be involved in your own life and your own business. Like love, business contacts will come to you in the strangest places. You will meet people at the gym – the museum – the produce section – the Krispy Kreme
store…
THE RULES
Try very hard not to be anxious, or grasping, or needy – or – just like with love – you can ‘go too fast.’
In the final analysis, you will have to handle the elemental business things of your acting career – or they won’t get done. All you have to do is be nice, dependable and a joy to work with. You’ll also want to become an advertising number cruncher, a memorable collaborator and paying attention to your customers – all while still having an outside life.
If this is not how you naturally behave, and you can’t (or won’t) develop these habits – well, there are other businesses where being nice and a joy to work with aren’t that important – like … morgue attendant.
Just kidding. I know you. I know you’ll pay attention to business.
NEXT INSTALLMENT: THE SEVEN ACTING MYTHS
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PERMISSION TO REPRINT: You may reprint articles from Actor’s Tool-Kit, on your website or electronic newsletter. However, in order to comply with my copyright, you must also include the following paragraph with your reprint:
“Reprinted from ACTOR’S TOOL KIT, the email course just for subscribers of Show Biz How-To — The Free Actor’s Monthly. Get your own free subscription by going to: showbizhowto.com
Copyright © 2006 Bob Fraser Productions All Rights Reserved”
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PRIVACY STATEMENT: Bob Fraser Productions will NEVER share your personal information with anyone. Ever. Period.
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Consonance
I’ve written a number of times in the last few weeks, encouraging you to join me (and lots of our fellow voiceover professionals) at V.O.I.C.E. International in March of this year. So, I think it’s very cool that the voice casting site a name so similar to the conference has signed on as a major sponsor of the event.
As noted in her comment a couple of message below, and as you can read about in this news report, Voices.com has signed on as a major sponsor of V.O.I.C.E. International.
I hope I get to meet you there, too.
Update: More information from Stephanie is available through Vox Daily and VOX Talk.
From Radio to Voiceover, a correspondence
The other day as I was looking through my server logs and noticed I was getting some traffic from a site I hadn’t seen before so I clicked over to check it out. The site was Clark W. Michael’s. So, I wrote him a quick note of thanks for the link, and to let him know I’d added him to my voiceover blogroll.
His response to that email prompted some correspondence I thought useful enough to share, so I asked Clark’s permission, which he has graciously granted, to post here.
He wrote…
Thanks for the link back. Appreciate it. I usually take a look at your blog about every morning and find it helpful and enjoy the friendly tone of your site.
Thank you. I’m delighted to know you’re enjoying the site. I’m happy to take a few minutes to try to answer your questions. You’ve made some important observations, to which I’ll respond in a moment; but first a couple of concrete suggestions:
1. Join the VO-BB.com. Lurk. Read the archives (I’ve read all of them, which took a long time, but was worth every hour it took.) Lurk some more. Post some questions when you feel like you’re ready. Post some answers when you have them. It’s a great on-line community and you’ll be glad you’re a part.
2. If you can possibly work out the schedule and finances, join us in Las Vegas at the end of March at the V.O.I.C.E. conference. It’s going to be an incredible time of learning, meeting loads of other people at all kinds of difference stages of their career, etc.
I’ve put the responses to your questions below, in among your questions. Please let me know if you have any other questions. I’ll do my best to answer.
I’m a radio guy and just beginning the arduous process of seeking voice work. Not easy at all. I’ve got a lot to learn and have come to the conclusion that I need to get on the phone and solicit work if I’m going to find any.
Work rarely falls into our laps with gift-wrap and a bow. While I’ve had that happen a few times, it’s usually the result of relationship that have been built over a long period of time; and not just some random event. But, before you start making phone calls looking for work you need: 1.) training (as you note above, there’s a lot to learn); 2.) a great demo for each category of voiceover work you’re trying to find (imaging, promo, commercial, narration, etc.); 3. a plan for how your not only going to “put yourself out there” but how you’re going to keep track of what’s working and what’s not working in your marketing plan. (Without this plan, and the ability to track and compare, you’ll never know where to concentrate greater resources and what to leave behind.)
I have an account with Voices.com, but that has proved rather fruitless.
My experience with Voice123.com and Voices.com has gone like this: I get cast about 4 times as often through Voice123.com as I do through Voices.com and most of my work through Voices.com has come as a result of direct contacts while my work through Voice123.com has mostly come through auditioning. But, I have a good friend for whom almost the exact opposite is true. Most of his work has come through Voices.com and little through Voice123.com. There’s no magic formula. When you audition, you do the very best work you can, send it, and forget it. Maybe every 3 months, you do a little comparison to see what’s working and what’s not (see my note above about planning, tracking and comparing); but I look at my membership fees at these sites as exactly what they are: advertising dollars. I spend it for the the doors of opportunity it opens, not for guaranteed work.
I’ve also come to the conclusion that radio and voice over are almost two different worlds.
You’ve just said a mouthful!
One would not assume that until investigating what it is you guys do to make a living. Hard work. Lots of rejection. I would guess most of the time you never hear back from the people for which you audition. That’s certainly true for me.
Correct. I rarely hear back from auditions, unless I’m cast. Of course, that’s what you want to hear!
I admire your tenacity and am realizing that that seems to be the key character trait necessary to find steady work.
Without persistence, you’ll give up. No one ever won anything by giving up. No one ever succeeded at anything by giving up.
I image you’re quite busy doing what you do, but if you have time — I’d sure appreciate any hints you can offer to steer me in a productive voice over direction.
See points #1 and #2 above.
However you can manage it
I hope you will plan to join me and many of your fellow voiceover professionals at the V.O.I.C.E. conference the last week of March 2007. We are going to learn so much. We are going to have such a great time.
Pat Fraley, Bob Bergen, MJ Lallo, Rodney Saulsberry, DB Cooper, Frank Frederick, James Alburger, Penny Abshire, Connie Terwilliger, Bettye Zoller, Chris Wagner, Gregory Best, Dave Courvoisier, and even more players to be named later. Whether you know all of these names, some of them or even none; every one of them is a working voiceover professional who is willing to dig into his or her bag of tricks and share with you.
I sure hope I’ll see you there.
An apt metaphor in an excellent blog post
My friend Peter O’Connell, better known in the voiceover business as audio’connell, (a really talented man as you can hear from his demos here); has been blogging about voiceover for a while. His post from yesterday is well worth a few minutes of your time. (Look for Saturday, January 13, 2007 if you’re reading this some time later. I can’t like directly to his post as Peter doesn’t have permalinks enabled on his blog.)
Here’s just one reason why, his very apt metaphor about voiceover and golf…
Often times people say to me “Why do you talk about other voice over talents?” or inquiry as to why I would reference them on my voice over site. The answer is simple and I suppose I should trademark it right here and now as I’ve used it for years: voice over talents are like golfers. Golfers aren’t truly competing against each other, they are really trying to beat the course.
Well said, Peter. And I couldn’t agree more. The voiceover business isn’t about competition, it’s about delivering the sound or style or pace or something for which the producer or writer or casting agent is searching.
A fabulous 10 hour day
My morning began at 7:50 AM when I rolled out of my hotel room bed in Pittsburgh (where I’ve been for a couple of days on a business trip) and with a decided spring in my step. For weeks now, Dan Nachtrab and Ben Wilson and I had been planning to meet for lunch in Columbus, Ohio.
I’ve talked with both of these guys either on the phone or on the Internet for months. We’ve emailed thoughts and ideas about voiceover work. I’ve offered suggestions on their demos when they’ve asked for feedback. And now, I was going to get to meet both of them in person, share a meal together and hopefully enjoy some good conversation.
I knew it would take about 3 hours to drive from Pittsburgh to Columbus. And we had agreed that we would meet at Champps Americana restaurant
in the Eaton Mall.
Strangely enough, I ended up being the first to arrive. This was mainly because my drive actually ended up taking only 2 hours and 55 minutes and I’d left about 5 minutes before I really needed to. A few minutes later, Ben walked through the door. I recognized him right away from both a photo I’d seen and from a television commercial for MAC tools that I’d seen him in on ESPN2. Just before Ben arrived, Dan had called to say he was running a bit late, so Ben and I got a table where we could see the door and sat down to talk and wait.
Just a few minutes later, in walks Dan. He has a couple of toys with him, including an incredible digital camera by Samsung and his new digital phone, which he’s holding here.
We had lunch together and all told talked basically non-stop for 4 solid hours, and could easily have kept going for several more I’m sure. But I had an appointment I had to get back to Pittsburgh for at 6:30 PM, so we all left the restaurant at 3:30.
Both Ben and Dan had insightful things to say. We talked about a wide range of subjects, not just voiceover work; but of course, we did discuss voiceover work quite a bit. I thought much about several things as I drove back across Eastern Ohio, the panhandle of West Virginia and on into Pittsburgh this afternoon.
This in particular. At one point late in our discussion, when I had talked about how uncomfortable I am with doing cold calls looking for new voiceover jobs, Dan leaned across the table toward me and said, “You’re very good. You know that, right?”
I nodded, not quite sure what to say.
“These people, when you call them. Do you understand, they want to talk to you? They want to talk to someone who is really, really good.”
Whew! Like I said, I had a lot to digest and not just the Reuben.
It was a very good day. Almost 6 hours of driving sandwiched around 4 fabulous hours of enriching, lively and intensely fun conversation and lunch. Thank you, Dan and Ben for an exceptional day.
I leave you with this final image, of Dan and Ben (Dan’s on the left) at our table.
PS: I arrived at my appointment back in Pittsburgh with 5 minutes to spare!
Harvesting follows planting
Never the other way around. As a kid who grew up in the farm country of North Central Minnesota, I knew this kernel of truth before I knew how to ride a bicycle.
My friend Brian Haymond has a excellent post on the value of planting voiceover seeds. What? Read it. You’ll see what I mean.
Like me, Brian lives in Charlotte, NC. So, while I’m on the subject of voiceover guys in Charlotte, today I received a very nice email of greeting from another voiceover guy in Charlotte, Jon Carter. I’ve added Jon to my blogroll to the left.
Golden Handcuffs
Every week at the end of her regular The Actor’s Voice column, Bonnie Gillespie has a section titled Your Turn. While I think her new column is stellar, and almost every word applies in some way to people trying to get into the world of voiceover work; but what I really want to call to your attention is the Your Turn section at the bottom of this column.
Here’s the question to which Bonnie responds…
I’m here in NY. (Yea!) I’ve managed to get a temp job (happened fairly quickly) and an apartment (took three months and at the “low” rent of $1200/month for a 1-bedroom). I’ve had some good acting success with a number of indie films and TV pilots so far and I’ve even had the lead in an NYU student film (and I’ve only been here a couple of months). I can feel my confidence increasing and opportunities opening up. I feel it won’t be long before I start making some money with my acting, in spite of all the input from everywhere about how limited opportunities are. I have just ignored all of that and moved full steam ahead into my work. So here is my question.
The temp job that I’ve been working is looking to hire the position I’ve been in permanently. They’ve been flexible with me as a temp to take whatever time I’ve needed for moving and acting but I’m worried that if I take a permanent position with them I’ll lose that flexibility. On the other hand, I need to make that $1200/month just to cover my rent. I’d like some input from people out there who are working actors. Is a bird in the hand really better than two in the bush? Do I opt for a more financially secure position knowing that the loss of flexibility could possibly cost me work?
Thanks for any input. And as always, thanks for the great column. You are an incredible resource for all of us.
Bonnie’s response is brilliant, transparent and full of great advice. Here’s a key thought…
I had to trust that I was going to be able to make a living, because there is no guarantee that you will, when you choose the freelance lifestyle. I had done the “job security” thing the last time I had moved across the country for this crazy career. I was not going to fall for that again! They’re called golden handcuffs for a reason. The job takes care of you and you get used to living a certain way. And then you’re stuck. And you’re not pursuing acting anymore. Or if you are, it’s like a hobby you barely have time for. And that’s not why you moved to a major market, right?
Read the whole thing, main column and Your Turn. It’s well worth your time.
Getting from here to there
I’ve made a couple of changes and additions to my blogroll today. Changes that I’d like to call to your attention. First, I’ve changed the label for one section from Writing to Career. Dan O’Day, Dick Orkin, Roy H. Williams and Kristine Oller are all people to whom you should listen and from whom you would do well to learn.
But, I especially want to call your attention to the second Kristine Oller link, which is in the section titled Blogging Friends. First, Kristine is indeed a friend. And, she’s now blogging. But, it’s the specific focus of her blog to which I want to call your attention. It’s a blog intended to help you get from where you are now, (with a foot in two, three, maybe 12 baskets), to where you want to be, making your living doing what you love.
Here’s one of the key paragraphs from her first post…
As someone who used to act plus make copies, I know the frustration of having to squeeze your creative expression into the nooks and crannies of your weekly schedule and, on occasion, having to shove it to the side of your life altogether. I also know that this kind of daily grind, if it continues for too many years, can utterly deplete your creative spirit. And once your joy and passion start to fade, burnout (and its nasty cousin, bitterness) can invade.
And she closes with these stirring thoughts…
[T]oday, I am fortunate enough to wake up every morning able to make my living doing things that I love to do. I hope the same will soon be true for you as well.
I plan to make Kristine’s blog a regular stop. I hope you will, too.