You are Like a Hurricane

Shut up and sit down. Welcome to Being On Stage, the only podcast that gives you motivation, inspiration, and confidence to be better on stage. No matter how you entertain, sing, dance, band, comedian, public speaking, emcee, drag, burlesque, performance art, or street performer, this is the show for you. Hey, rock stars. Reggie Dawson here, your host of the Being On Stage podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in. It's been a couple of days. You know, I'm still on a podcast every day regimen. However, where I live, I live in Florida, in case you don't know. We're preparing for a hurricane. And listen, I'm going to get to the performing bit, but I learned some lessons that I want to share with you that you can actually, well, that you can use. You can use for performing on stage, truthfully. So, we have this hurricane brewing out in the Atlantic Ocean, Dorian. If you don't live anywhere near the East Coast, I mean, I suppose you could be completely oblivious to this, but it's like a Category 4 hurricane, 150 mile an hour winds. And for a split second, for yesterday, actually yesterday, yesterday was Friday, August 30th, one of the forecasts had the line, the track going, literally through my backyard. And so I'm going to, actually, I can tell you where I live. If you Google Hutchinson Island in Florida, H-U, Hutchinson Island in Florida, or Barrier Island, that's where I live, right on the East Coast of Florida. And it can be pretty intense during, you know, hurricane time. I'm right around the beach, you know, so we got the storm surge and everything to worry about. Plus, you know, there's 150 mile an hour winds ripping through the empty lots next to my house. So, little nerves are running a little high, you know, anxiety is pumping a little bit, the heart's going. Naturally, because I'm an overthinker, the brain is going and I'm picturing all these horrible, horrible scenarios. And what if this happens? And what if that happens? Luckily, right now, they have it going, you know, off. Off into the Atlantic Ocean. And, you know, some people, when they see the track of a hurricane change like that, they stop their preparations and they, you know, they pull back. And it's funny because now I'm going to turn this hurricane track into, you're the hurricane, the performer. Okay. So, let me just explain a little bit how the hurricane works. It starts in the tropics, usually off the coast to Africa, or it can develop anywhere in the Atlantic Ocean. And listen, if you guys know what a hurricane is and how it develops, that's cool. This is going to be like the quick guide to a hurricane. So, it develops in the Atlantic Ocean and then based on different currents, high pressure, low pressure, how hot the water is, based on different currents, it, you know, makes its way through its track. It builds up strength. The warmer the water, the stronger it gets. If it goes over land, the weaker it gets, tends to break up. And as a performer and as a performing hurricane, if you will, a lot of times when you first start out, you start out small. You start out, you know, just huffing and puffing along in the middle of this great big ocean, not really sure where you're going to go, not really sure where you're going to land. And truthfully, nobody really knows where you're going to end up. And, but you just, I guess, yeah, you, you just keep chugging along. And as you come in contact with those warmer waters, those, those people that are going to gravitate towards you and your fans and the people that are actually going to support you, you start to grow a little bit. And, you know, as you perform and you keep rehearsing and you keep honing in on your talent, you start to grow a little bit more. Maybe eventually you, you turn into a tropical storm. So you start as a tropical wave, then you turn into a tropical depression. I don't know why they call it a depression, but then a tropical storm. So you turn into a tropical storm and, and as you're approaching the United States or South America, whatever track you're going to be on, your, your track is going to change so many different times. The funny thing about hurricanes is as, as much technology as we have, they're still highly unpredictable. Stumble over my words again. They're still highly unpredictable weather anomalies. So they can, they can make forecasts and they can say, Oh, it's going to land here. It's going to land there. But listen, 24 hours ago, this storm was going to cross to my backyard. Now it's 75 miles off the coast of Florida. And I might not even have to evacuate my home. And I live two blocks from the ocean. So, and it's a category four, like it's, it's pretty big. It's pretty up 150 mile an hour winds drive 75 miles an hour, stick your hand out the window and double it. That's how fast these winds are going to be going. And it's highly unpredictable in your career as a performer, when you're just starting out and, and people are starting to kind of measure you up and gauge where you're going to go. And some people even try to predict who you're going to be, what you're going to do, how far you're going to go, how you're going to develop, what you're going to develop into. And most of the time, the predictions and the forecasts are going to be very, very different than what you're going to be. And the forecast of your career is going to change so many different times. So also with hurricanes, they have these different models. So there's the United States model, the European model, the Australia, there's all these different models. There's a bunch of different weather services that have different predictions of how this, how this storm is going to play out and where it's going to go. And they do updates every three hours on the track of a hurricane, three hours. And in the course of three hours, the, we're going to have a hurricane that's going to be a hurricane that's going to be a hurricane that's going to be a hurricane that's going to be a hurricane that's going to be a hurricane that's going to be a hurricane that's going to be a storm. So where the storm lands could change a hundred miles. So, and turning this back around to you now, the reformer, when people try to predict you and people try to fit you into this certain path that you're expected to go, you don't have to follow it. You're a freaking hurricane. You're going to go where you need to go. You're going to go where you feel you need to go. And it's okay if it changes over time. It's okay if you change your path 6,000 times. Your path is your path. It is only yours and no one else is going to travel the same path. There has literally been hundreds, if not thousands of hurricanes documented. And I'm not just talking strong hurricanes, everything from a tropical wave up through a category five wall breaker, I guess we'll call it hundreds, if not thousands of hurricanes, not a single one has traveled an identical path. Think about all the performers out there. Everything. It doesn't matter who it is. You can think singers, you can think dancers, acrobats, jugglers, magicians, think about all the performers in the world. Do you think any single one of them is going to take the same exact path to get to where they're supposed to be? Not a chance. There's, there's, there is a zero chance that your path is going to be identical to someone else's. You have to go your own way. Oh man. Oh, I love that song. Go your own way. Yeah, that's it. But you have to go the way that you are meant to go. And it may not, it may not be a straight path. And listen, some of these hurricanes, they do this little loop-de-loop thing, but listen, when it comes time for you to make landfall, when it comes time for you to be that, that, that performer that you are meant to be, and you are striking and bearing down on the land and then making this like natural disaster into this amazing thing, right? You are absolutely going to crush it in the most amazing way because you followed your own path. And listen, sometimes hurricanes go off into the Atlantic ocean and nobody ever hears or sees them again. And that happens to a lot of performers as well, but not you, not you. You're not going to fade away. You're not going to just loop off and go off into the ocean. You're going to come crashing in. People are going to know that you've arrived. They may try to predict it. They may try to forecast it. They, hell, they may try to fit you into a certain path or carve a path for you. Under no circumstances, under absolutely zero circumstances, do you need to follow any path but your own? Crash into that land, make landfall. Listen, in 2004, there was a hurricane called Hurricane Ivan. And you can look this up. True story. You can look this up. This hurricane was coming through the Atlantic and the entire, first of all, it was huge. I mean, it was huge. The entire state of Florida could have, it was easily covered by this hurricane. Like there was no Florida. There was just, it was like North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, hurricane. That's, that's what the map looked like. So this, this storm and the worst of the storm, it started coming up towards the central part of Florida where I live. And then, you know, it tilted back down. It ended up, this is what ended up happening. Okay. And it ended up going around the tip of Florida, up to the panhandle, hit the panhandle, went off. into western Georgia, looped through South Carolina, came back out into the Atlantic Ocean, came back around and hit the northern part of Florida near Daytona and Jacksonville. And then it went back out into the Gulf and hit Texas. Like, these hurricanes do some crazy, crazy things. You and your path might be just as crazy. And no matter what anybody tells you, listen to this one thing. That is okay. Your path, it could be full of crazy loop-de-loops and backward-forward motions, and you're going to go this way and then that way, and you're going to change your direction 6,000 times. Your path could also be a straight shot. But it's yours. It's yours to make, and it's yours to take. One of the things I learned the most about hurricanes is the necessary preparations. And a lot of people, you know, when the threats are moved, they start taking down their preparations or ceasing preparations. And we're not ceasing preparations. We're going to continue to prepare. Because I know this storm's going to be something. Just like you. I know you're going to be something. But you know, as performers, we've got to prepare ourselves as well. So we may be hurricanes, but we also have to prepare ourselves. And in a lot of ways, we're going to have to prepare ourselves. And we're going to have to prepare ourselves. You prepare yourself through rehearsal, through, you know, spending time with your act and spending time with yourself. And sometimes just, you know, sometimes you need a little bit of help, someone to hold you accountable, someone to set you in motion, someone to help you prepare your path. And again, it's going to change. It's not going to be the path that you see in front of you today is not going to be the exact path that you take. Because you're an unpredictable anomaly. Just like a hurricane. But you got to prepare yourself. And I'm here to help you prepare. Hop on my calendar, beingonstage.com slash calendar. Let's get you rocking like a hurricane. These song references are making me smile like I ate a banana sideways. Let's get you rocking like a hurricane, man. Let's get you going down some path. The worst hurricanes are the ones that stay still. And they just brood. And they build and build and they're these amazingly talented things. They have so much potential, but they just kind of sit there and then they go off and fizzle out. That's what you don't want to do. So if you want to start that forward motion and you want to come attack Florida as the next killer hurricane, hop on my calendar, beingonstage.com slash calendar. I want to talk to you. I want to talk to you about your dreams and I want to help you set them in motion. Keep on shining.