Quote

Anything I wanted to do and achieve has not been influential in my life, but my failures have.

Y'know, the real reason why I was such a failure in the sense of being unable to make any sort of a living was because I was really not motivated. I had no motivation.

People tried to make me something that I wasn't at the beginning of my career.

I felt a failure because I couldn't sustain myself from what I earned from my writing. My day jobs were what mattered, and it was hard to even get those because universities wouldn't hire me as a real writer.

So the only things I was being allowed to audition for were small roles in comedies. It broke my heart. No one would see me for anything else. I knew, in order to open up my career, I had to leave or that's all I would ever be given.

I think in the early part of my career, the roles were so disparate that it never gave anybody an opportunity to understand my essence and what I would be good at doing, as opposed to what I would not be good at doing, so these little moments of beautiful things that were happening to me were consistent, but very few and very far between.

I had lost a clear sense of the vision and values instilled in me as a child and was no longer driven by any mission or passion. I made the difficult decision to pull back from the noise of my life and reinvent the way I was living and leading.

I turned down as many roles that I thought were beyond my abilities as I did ones I thought weren't good enough.

The choices of roles I made had to do with educating and entertaining. And as a result I found myself working only every two or three years.

My failed corporate career became the fodder for the 'Dilbert' comic. Once it became clear I would not be climbing any higher on the corporate ladder, it freed me to mock managers without worrying that it would stall my career. Most failures create some sort of unplanned freedom. I took full advantage of mine.