Did your parents ever worry that you would never amount to much?
I was watching this interview the other day:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RKUUTLLDQc
If you want to find out how Jonah Hill got his big break by making prank phone calls for Dustin Hoffman it’s pretty interesting, but there was another part of it that stuck with me:
Late in the interview Jonah reveals that his dad was seriously concerned that he’d ever amount to anything, or even be able to support himself. As a parent I can utterly relate to that concern; even though my kids seem bright and are growing up with privileged opportunities I still worry (the end of the world due to climate change aside) a lot about whether they’ll be ‘successful’ or ‘happy’ (those are in inverted commas because I have no idea what they mean) and what I can do to help.
But then the Jonah Hill thing is quite liberating: apparently you can believe your kid will be a pointless fuckup a mere couple of years before they become a massively successful writer and movie star. I suppose if that’s the case we can all be more OK with our children’s potential to do well or badly because we really have no idea.
(By the way, for the purposes of this post I asked my parents if they ever worried about whether I’d amount to much. Although they said they didn’t I certainly had my doubts, mainly around the time I got sacked from Y&R. But it all turned out fine (so far).)
Did you ever think your life was going to head down the pan before it headed gratifyingly in the opposite direction? Or did you waste your massive potential somehow? Are you still concerned you might spend some of your future living in a cardboard box under Waterloo Bridge?
the inverted commas dilemma reminds me of an interesting definition of success and
happiness as defined by dale carnegie, “success is getting what you want. happiness is
wanting what you get”. i think it’s pretty accurate.
That works very well.
It’s an interesting one this. I have asked this same question to my parents and they said they just hoped I didn’t end up working in the local factory. Which so far, i’ve avoided.
It continues to surprise me how success can find you so rapidly though.
I Suppose you just have to put yourself out there. That’s when the unexpected, interesting stuff happens.
I think about this a lot. I was reading Steve McQueen’s biography the other day, I worry the lesson learned from that book and a few others that I have read is to give my kids the most atrocious life possible and give them something to fight back against.
Children of successful people are often monumental fuck ups (i have no basis for this statement)
On leaving Uni my only ambition was to work in the ‘music industry.’ Sadly, this was around the time Napster was just emerging to kill it.
After doing a few placements, and with no prospect of getting the job I wanted (or any type of paid work for that matter), I decided advertising was the future. I applied for a junior copywriter role, cobbled together a frankly terrible portfolio and got the job. Now here I am, glad that I decided to change direction.
I certainly wasted a lot of potential from a very young age. But I’m not too bitter about it.
Thinking about it now, I like what Peter Cook said on the subject: “Can you think of anything worse than fulfilling your potential?”
The journey has probably been more interesting as a result.
With regard kids, there are no guarantees. All I know is that a parent should never stand in the way of what their child wants to do, no matter how daft.
They may not succeed but not everyone can, and life usually looks after us one way or another.
It’s all about your own personal path, man
Career-wise? Started at the lower end of the championship, before a spell in the Champions League here and overseas. Went the way of Pompey and now it’s pretty much non-league.
why did you get sacked from y&r?
Laziness, playing ping pong, that kind of thing.
Getting sacked from Y & R can be a good thing.
http://adland.tv/adnews/indonesian-copywriter-dies-after-working-three-days-straight/1387151189
Surely as a parent, it’s your job to equip your kids with the skills/personality to not be a fucking waste of skin.
What’s really interesting to me though, is the potential for our (i.e relatively successful Advertising Creatives’) kids to do whatever they bloody well want with their lives, if we set them up for it.
We exist in a world where being a photographer/actor/writer/director/singer/musician is a normal job. Totally and utterly acceptable and actually fairly attainable.
If I’d have said to my parents (upper working class, shit British town) that I wanted to be a musician or actor, they’d have laughed at me and said “just make sure you’ve got something to fall back on”, because that world is not in their reality.
But this industry opens your eyes, both attitudinally and financially to doing whatever you bloody well want and it ACTUALLY HAPPENING.
I have no proof of this but I reckon you’ve got far more chance of being a jobbing Sculptor if your Dad’s an ECD than if your Dad’s a butcher.
This post is fucking long and probably off-point, by the way, but whatevs…
i remember early in my career toiling away for almost two years on Reebok. Got absolutely nowt produced. i was a desperate man! And then everything changed dramatically.