Emotional Pro

My heart has told me that it is time to share some of the “back story” of Full Power Living.  We’ll be telling you that story in a few installments.  Here is the first!  –Ilene

 

My older sister asked me, when I was 15, if I thought I knew what I wanted to do in my adult life.  “Write,” I responded, with the certainty of youth.  “What about?” she inquired.

 

“Life! But I think I have to live some of it before I can write about it,” I concluded.

 

I forgot about that conversation until many years later, in my 30’s, someone reminded me through a comment they made, stimulating me to think that I may have lived enough life by then to write about some of it.  I decided to write at least 15 minutes per day.  By focusing my attention (Principle:  What we pay attention to, we feed energy to, causing it to grow) on writing, I “awakened” this talent that had been latent in me since my teens.

 

Truth be told, I got involved in radio at a very young age, too.  As a senior at Hampton High School in Hampton, Virginia, I enrolled in Speech Class. In addition to competing in a poetry reading contest (I didn’t win, because I had practiced so much the judges said I was reciting, rather than reading, “Patterns,” by 

Amy Lowell!), I had the opportunity to direct a radio program.  The segment was fiction, called “The Twilight Zone.”  It was my job to select the actors, sound effects, engineers, and then put it all together into a production.  At schools’ end that year, I was awarded the prize for “Best Radio Production” for my graduating class.  They gave me a silver microphone to put on those popular charm bracelets so many girls had back then.

 

So, I started speaking in the 4th grade (my teacher allowed me 1/2 hour each day, afollowing lunch, to take “orders” from my classmates as to topic and characters, then make up, tell an illustrate on the blackboard a story I created from my imagination.)  I started writing in 11th grade.  And in 12th grade, I became an award-winning radio producer!

 

 

But when I was contacted and offered the opportunity to start my own radio program in 2003, I wasn’t remembering that I was already an award-winner.  Something pulled me to say “yes,” against my husband’s sensible advice.  Never mind that I had to pay for the privilege of creating and hosting a weekly radio program for 13 weeks.  My message, about the importance of human emotions, was one that needed to be heard by everyone; and this was a way to make that happen.

 

Everything that could go wrong, went wrong.  First of all, I had no idea of what I was doing, because this radio production was on the Internet.  I didn’t realize all that was necessary to do (the recruiter had made it sound so easy—and they promised production support, too).  In addition to creating the concept, deciding the format, recruiting the guests, writing the script and “showing up” (in my office at home, over the telephone) to host the program, I discovered there were new computer programs I needed to know.  They included programs for maintaining contact lists and sending out e-mail announcements of the shows, proprietary systems for listing shows on the “station” website, ways to keep track of statistics, forms for keeping guest information straight, and so forth.  Early on, too, it became evident to me that to be comfortable interviewing people who had written books we were discussing, I would need to read their books.  Initially, it took me at least two full days a week to do a one-hour weekly radio show.

 

Persistence, they say, pays off. I needed persistence, because three weeks before my show launched, I discovered that my “producer” had quit the radio station, and nobody had told me.  Insisting that I needed a “producer,” the station manager reluctantly agreed to fill the job for me.  That arrangement didn’t work well, because every time I contacted him for help, he readily told me he was a very important person with a very busy schedule—so what did I need, anyway?  After I did my first show, I contacted him to ask for the feedback promised (in the written contract), and was informed two weeks later that they could not give it to me, because their feedback person no longer worked there, either, and nobody else—apparently—had the ability (or the time) to listen to my show and advise me about what I had done correctly, and what needed improvement. 

Nearing the end of my 13 week commitment, I was about to end my very short radio career, when……  (To Be continued!)