Project Inspiration

My iPhone ringtone is “Pick Yourself Up” – the Jerome Kern - Dorothy Fields classic written for Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in the 1936 Hollywood film “Swingtime”. Many years later I heard it for the first time as an instrumental by the jazz pianist George Shearing in his original, locked hands style. The song remains a jazz standard. And the lyric “…pick yourself up, dust yourself off and start all over again” attracts many top vocalists.

And for me it’s still a helpful reminder.
I learned about picking yourself up very early in life – coming from a show business, music business family. But I didn’t make a personal connection until my early 20’s when I gave myself a year to follow my dream of being a singer-dancer-actress in New York City.
For a year I picked myself up day after day as agents’ doors closed in my face, directors at auditions rejected me and my unemployment checks ran out.
But I – and my ego – survived. And I learned for myself that there is always a tomorrow. With another, perhaps more realistic, dream.

Sometime during that Broadway-bound period, my boyfriend and I had a very messy breakup. It was the first real tragedy of my young life. I sat at home playing the saddest Frank Sinatra songs I could find – sure I would die from grief. I lost 10 pounds. But one day about a year later I emerged from my black and gray-shaded world into the sunlight -- knowing for a fact that whatever life threw at me emotionally I would survive it. It sounds trite; almost everyone has been through something similar. But for me it was truly empowering. Almost an epiphany in the secular sense.

Fast forward a bunch of years to my first marathon -- the New York City Marathon which my husband and I ran while I was a CBS News correspondent. A few days later I was struggling as I always did to write my 10 minute 6PM radio newscast and I was way behind. “I’ll never make it,” I moaned to myself as I usually did. And then it dawned on me. I had finished a marathon -- running the last 6 (10km) of the 26.2 miles (42.16km) on legs which said “no” while my mind said “yes”. I could do anything now! Of course I would finish that newscast in time. And of course I did. I never worried about it again.

During my long years building a career as an on-air TV and radio journalist I have used those three very different life experiences over and over. They have built on each other and somehow entwined – creating something like an inner coil of strength. I’ve never tried to analyze it until now but it’s kind of like an acrobat performing on the high trapeze – knowing there’s a very strong and resilient safety net below.

As a local and network news reporter and anchor I have to perform that trapeze act every day. You are only as good as your last newscast or story. There’s constant pressure to “get the story first, get it fast and get it right”. And in the end – no matter how good your team may be (if you’re lucky enough to have one) - there is only one person you can or should depend on to “get it right” – yourself.

So now and then -- when work or people or life itself gets really rough – I still reach deep inside my head for my mantra.

“I finished a marathon – actually 30 marathons”, I tell myself. “I can do anything I have to do”.

And I do.