TAKING RISKS<\/p>\n
Back in 1993, I received a phone call from an agent who\u00a0asked me if I wanted to audition to write Diana Ross\u2019s memoir. I didn\u2019t\u00a0understand what he meant. Audition? That had never come up before. He went on\u00a0to explain that she had fired her writer and there were three months left to\u00a0complete the book. She wanted to see if she liked my writing before she hired\u00a0me so the agent offered to pay me for one chapter, a dollar a word, that I\u00a0would write about her concert in Central Park in 1983 that had been rained out.\u00a0The caveat was that I wouldn\u2019t be able to interview her. I had one review at my
disposal, a short piece that her daughters, Tracee, had written and I had a\u00a0week to submit my chapter.<\/p>\n
I said yes. I hung up the phone and sat there, paralyzed. What
did I just do? Who did I think I was? I felt like an imposter and when the\u00a0agent and diva found out, I knew I would be humiliated. I read the review and\u00a0her daughter\u2019s piece, I pulled up a blank document on my computer screen, put\u00a0my fingers on the keyboard . . . and I took to my bed. I lay there with the\u00a0covers pulled up, trembling on the inside, wondering what the hell I thought I\u00a0was doing. The very gall of me to think I could write in Diana Ross\u2019s voice.<\/p>\n
I spent most of the day in bed. When something rocks me, I\u00a0give myself twenty-four hours to feel it and be afraid. But no more. No
wallowing. The next morning I got up, made some coffee, put myself in the shoes\u00a0of an international diva and I began to write. How would it feel to be on stage\u00a0when the rain began pelting down on the musical instruments? How would it feel\u00a0to stop dead in the middle of singing one\u2019s heart out and calming the audience\u00a0so everyone would leave the premises safely and quickly?<\/p>\n
There is a Zen saying: Leap and the net will appear.<\/p>\n
I finished writing it, I submitted the chapter, I got the\u00a0job, and I began an extraordinary journey into the legend that is Diana Ross.\u00a0What if I had been too afraid to even try?<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve done a lot of risk taking in my life and I\u2019ve come to\u00a0know the difference between going for something difficult and doing something\u00a0stupid. When I was touring with the ballet in the sixties, I was in Brussels\u00a0eating frog\u2019s legs with a few fellow dancers when a French speaking man about\u00a0my age invited all of us to a private party. My companions begged off but I\u00a0decided to take a risk and go with him. My French was shaky but I could make\u00a0myself understood. The night ended when he tried to get me to sleep with him, I\u00a0said \u201cNon!\u201d and he shoved me out into the street at midnight and locked the\u00a0door behind him. It was dark, I had no idea where I was, but I found a taxi, a\u00a0pure miracle, and made it back to the hotel. I had dodged a bullet that could\u00a0have been my demise. That was stupid.<\/p>\n
The point here is that if you don’t attempt to do the\u00a0difficult thing that doesn’t put your life in danger, you miss out on\u00a0magnificent experiences. You might fail, God knows I\u2019ve failed a lot in my\u00a0life, but the things that have come my way by taking a risk, the successes I\u2019ve\u00a0had, make it all worthwhile. I know an American woman who turned down an\u00a0opportunity to voice coach Princess Diana because she was too afraid. The\u00a0Princess died in a car crash shortly afterward and my friend regrets her decision\u00a0to this day.<\/p>\n
The next time you get faced with something risky, if it isn\u2019t\u00a0life threatening, just go for it. If it doesn’t work out, at least you\u2019ll know
you tried. If it does, you might have one of the most transforming experiences\u00a0of your life.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was
more painful than the risk it took to blossom.\u201d\u00a0
– – – Anais Nin<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
TAKING RISKS Back in 1993, I received a phone call from an agent who\u00a0asked me if I wanted to audition to write Diana Ross\u2019s memoir. I didn\u2019t\u00a0understand what he meant. Audition? That had never come up before. He went on\u00a0to explain that she had fired her writer and there were three months left to\u00a0complete the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":1901,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1902","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1902","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1902"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1902\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}