JANUARY 29th - Starting From the Bottom


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On this day in 1920, Walt Disney applied for a job with Kansas City Slide Company, a job he took to draw cartoons and animation for 40 dollars a week. Even the mighty Walt Disney had to start small. The job proved a vital introduction into animation and film production that would later help Disney become Disney. It’s hard to remember that very rarely do things just poof, happen overnight. The lottery perhaps. But then how many stories have you heard about people completely ruining their lives after winning the lotto? Again, I would love the chance to disprove this theory, but for the most part, success in anything comes slowly and with a lot of hard work. It’s easier now than ever before to forget that. Everything is so instantaneous. We get frustrated if it takes longer than 2 seconds for a website to load. But no matter how quickly we can find out vital information like knowing Miley Cyrus twerked a giant teddy bear or Justin Bieber peed in a fast food mop bucket or how quickly we can look up less important information like a YouTube of the State of the Union or the population of Kazakhstan (around 17 million), it is still impossible to just snap your fingers and become a success. Old Walt started from the bottom, just like Aubrey Drake Graham. Surely there is some chance involved, as Walt took a job that would provide him important skills and ignite a passion, and that doesn’t happen for everybody. But I think it might happen to more people if they had a little more patience and were willing to put in a bit more time and elbow grease to go from A to B to C to D to E instead of expecting to get from A to Z because they celebrities they watch on TV told them that anything is possible. Because first off--not everything is possible. Some things are very impossible. And I’m not just talking about man having the ability to teleport. I’m saying a person who sounds like he/she is being strangled by a walrus when singing, doesn’t have pop stardom in the cards. Could be a great songwriter though. The trick, I think, is to identify one’s talents, find a way to use them, and put in the work to cultivate them. I dare say that is Walt Disney did. But what do I know. I’m just hoping somebody important reads this and offers me a lot of money to write stuff.

This day has been Marked.

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