Do You Love A Moonshot?
I love a moonshot. I think it’s because my parents came from humble, difficult beginnings to create a stable, secure home for me, my sister and my brother. And they did this without high school degrees or mentors or a guidebook.
We grew up in a lower income household outside of Chicago. We rarely took vacations, going to a restaurant meant occasional take-out from Brown’s Chicken, and the thermostat during winter never went over 62 degrees — otherwise Dad would blow a gasket from the electric bill. Mom made my Halloween costumes, we shopped at K-Mart and we used the same fake silver Christmas tree every year.
They never talked about goals, dreams or moonshots. It wasn’t a part of their vocabulary. They talked “Hard work, keep your head down, don’t rock the boat.” I think they felt like they were getting away with something when they bought this house when I was two and a half years old.
Owning a house in the suburbs was a pretty big accomplishment. For them, it was a symbol of achievement, success and a kind of “fuck you” to all the people who didn’t believe in them or their marriage. Dad was a “bad boy” who married Mom when he was stationed in Osaka, Japan during the Korean War. War brides were not encouraged or welcomed, and it was hard on Mom when she came to the States.
There were a few years when they came close to losing the house. Dad was a heavy machine operator, and one of the times the union went on strike, he didn’t get paid for over a year. That’s when Mom went to work with a promise from Dad: “I’ll pay you back.”
He never did despite going back on the job. Better to keep saving just in case the bottom falls out of the economy again. Or we lose health insurance. Or something happens to one of us kids.
They didn’t plan on me going to college - there was no such thing as a 529 to tuck away money for education. I wrote about their financial sacrifice here.
There was a frugality to our lives that I wasn’t conscious of until I went to college and saw excess and privilege that I had previously only seen on TV.
College was an un-named moonshot. I had a love of stories, but no clue what to do with it. At the time, I thought maybe I could be an actress, but Dad wasn’t going to spend tens of thousands of dollars on me doing something so frivolous. So I majored in Radio/Television/Film without knowing where that would lead. Talk about a moonshot.
A moonshot is a lofty goal, a giant leap.
🤷🏾 How could a mixed race kid with no Hollywood connections have a a career in entertainment?
🤷🏾 How could an assistant make the jump to become a director of development?
🤷🏾 How could an animation executive eventually become the head of drama development at a broadcast network?
🤷🏾 How could someone who was fired become the head of programming at a new network?
I’ll tell you how these moonshots came to be — even though, like my parents, I didn’t have the terms defined like I do now.
I have a strong, internal COMPASS. In the last ten years, I’ve learned to translate that compass into clear values that I actively work to honor. I listen deeply to my intuition even when my intellect tries to override it. I have finally embraced my talents as opposed to playing small. I know and live my life purpose. To be clear, I have stepped all over my values in the past and continue to do so. Here’s a story about the time I stepped on my values and my career became a cake wreck.
I embrace the COURAGE my parents cultivated in me. I’ve learned to face challenges and opposition by creating boundaries, battling “gremlins”, and managing stress and anxiety. Perhaps most importantly, I have the courage to grieve losses that others don’t necessarily validate, like being fired, or having a project go south. To be clear again, I have been a weenie: spineless, manipulative and dishonorable. Some day I’ll write more on that.
I consistently examine what I call CALIBRATION to see what I need to course correct. Am I honoring my values and life purpose? Do I need to refine my executive functioning? Do I need to re-jigger my team? Am I on track to make a positive impact on the people around me and the world? To be clear once again, I never even knew what a life purpose was until I went through life coach training and certification nine years ago. And I have historically been an outsider who goes it alone. Don’t fully blame me - my sun sign is Aquarius.
This is me circa 1993. First time I called a moonshot: a vacation in Mexico. First time climbing a rock wall too.
What I love about naming moonshots is that it evaluates my potential. When I was climbing that wall, I would grab a crimp and test it before I gave it my weight. A moonshot does that for me - I get to see just how far my will, my talents, my resiliency can take me, and whether I’m operating at my full capacity or holding back. And I gotta tell you, it’s not just confidence building, it’s profound because achieving the moonshot gives me a new perspective. I see things about myself and others I never imagined possible.
I’m grateful that my parents taught me about moonshots, through their actions and not words. I can feel them cheering me from beyond - while also saying, “Be careful!”
I love a moonshot. What’s yours?
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