16 and Life to Go

A lot of people use the term "Hell on Earth." It can describe anything from a trip to the dentist or your marriage. I never hear anyone say they're living in Purgatory on Earth though. In the middle with no where to go, no idea which way is up or down, and just how the hell they got there.

I don't know a ton of people who attack the day. Wake up in the morning and love what they do and who they work for. The fact is, there's always a boss. I laugh when people say they're going to open a restaurant and the "cash the checks." Starting a business is like having a second family. It's a never ending set of balls in the air and you'll be lucky if you can catch one, let alone juggle them all.

I was bitching about what I was doing career-wise to a friend of mine one time and I said "you know, the 16-year-old me has dictated what the 31-year-old me can do." When I was 16 I didn't know my ass from a hole in the ground, although if you asked me I was certain of the location of both holes.

I thought my dream job was to work in the NFL. Technically I accomplished that goal when I was 14 as a ball boy with the Eagles. Two years later I was filling out college applications and chose public relations because it meant I could work in the NFL in a capacity that didn't involve folding towels.

My first interview was a complete disaster. I remember driving to the Charlotte chain restaurant in Bruce Speight's black Honda as he began the process. I repeated every buzz word I could remember from my Public Relations 101 class at Mansfield. Everything except the only thing his department handled, the media. I think I was 19.

Bruce hired me. I'm sure only because I was referred to him by someone in the organization. That's the only way to get a job. Monster.com is garbage. If you want to land a job, land some friends of friends.

That summer internship led to an internship with the Philadelphia Eagles, which led to my first benefits providing job with the Philadelphia Soul which led to my last job in professional sports, a three-year stint with the Arizona Cardinals.

Life moves pretty fast. In the span of two weeks I moved out of my parents attic and 2250 miles away to a desert where I knew exactly zero people. Somehow, a 16-year-old Mike Kane guided himself into his dream job at 23.

That was it. I could have been the #3 media relations guy forever and thought I would be happy. I would have become a "lifer." One of the old guys at the yearly meetings who scoff at newfangled ideas of Twitter and Facebook. I would refuse to believe that there is any way to communicate with the public other than traditional mainstream media outlets.

Maybe I would be happy. I doubt it. I always lived by the American Dream. Get a good job, buy a house, send your kids to a better school, vacation at the shore, rinse, repeat, die.

I can cry and wish I had read James Altucher in 1996 and maybe gone against the norm and what was expected of me instead of following what I was interested in. I don't know anyone who has a passion for pharmaceutical vouchers and coupons, and if they exist, I don't want to meet them.

The thing is, it's not too late. Even if I take two years to learn a new craft that will put me at 33. Put in 25 years at something I love and I'll still be under 60.

The difference between knowing what you want to do, and doing it though, are balls. Do I have them?