It’s interesting when you sit back and reflect on the biggest moments in your life and you think about the things that would end up being pivotal, fork-in-the-road moments that could very well end up defining you as a person, as well as those around you.
If this one event happened, then it leads to this, which also leads to that, and inevitably you wind up at this point here or there.
It’s the domino effect. As soon as one comes tumbling down to connect with another, you soon see the ripple effect and how they’re all connected in the end.
Take my job, for example. (please don’t actually take my job, I need this or else I’ll end up swapping stories for quarters underneath the abandoned SkyTrail bridge…)
I’ve been a journalist in weekly news media for just over 13 years now. A baker’s dozen, as they say. Was it what I wanted to do in my life 13 years and change ago? I can’t say that it was. Growing up, I believe my career aspirations started with professional wrestler (I’d have no knees by this point if I went down that path), then I wanted to be a football player at 10 years old (no knees, plus a concussion or three), and then I settled on Hollywood screenwriter and director by the time I’d entered high school.
I even went to film school for eight months out in Victoria on gorgeous Vancouver Island. I had a blast, made some friends that I still remain connected to, and I even made a movie in a crack alley! That last one never did show up on any resumes, though.
Ultimately, upon moving back home here to rural Saskatchewan, I wasn’t finding much work and I eventually decided that while I’d keep up the writing, my future probably wasn’t going to include screenwriting and directing credits in Hollywood anytime soon. I needed work and I needed it now.
I happened to be flipping through the pages of The Outlook in early 2007 and saw a Help Wanted ad looking for a part-time production assistant for this fine publication. I went in, talked to the GM, and got the job. In addition to typing and editing copy, I’d done the odd editorial piece and even covered an event or two without being labeled a full-time reporter just yet, but that would soon change.
It turned out that the current reporter, a university student named Shirley, was going to be leaving us, and lo and behold, my higher-ups didn’t have far to look as to who would take up the mantle. I was offered the gig, said yes, and soon my name was appearing in bylines all over the newspaper.
The rest, as they say, is history.
I wound up deciding that things weren’t really happening on the filmmaking part, so I started looking for jobs in the area. I saw the ad in the paper, and I took a chance on getting hired. I was hired, and I decided to add my writing talents to the odd story here and there. The reporter wound up leaving, and I was right there to pick things up where things were left off.
The domino effect. One thing happened, which led to another thing happening, which led to another thing happening, and so on.
You could also say my relationship with my best friends came as sort of a domino effect. I was a lousy student in junior high and, admittedly, I did the bare minimum which allowed me to coast by. But that bit me in the behind in certain subjects, most notably math. It was ultimately decided that I had to repeat the eighth grade. I was terrified at the thought of it, of my friends and classmates advancing and leaving me behind. I was wishing the summer of 1999 would crawl by at a snail’s pace in order for that first day of school to never come.
But it did come, and in the end, failing Grade 8 was probably the best thing that could’ve ever happened to me.
If I was a better student and went on to Grade 9 like everyone else, I wouldn’t have made a connection with Kyle through our mutual love of pro wrestling, and he wouldn’t have reached out to his other friends such as Chris, Mitch and Alex about “this Derek guy who wound up in our class”.
In short, I wouldn’t have met the guys who would end up becoming my best friends in life; family who just happens to not be blood related.
Domino effect. I fail Grade 8, I wind up in the same class as Kyle, we share a mutual affection for something, I open up more to others, I end up with some of the best guys I’ll ever know in this crazy world.
Those happy domino effects in life are worth reflecting on, my friends. They show you how far you’ve come in some rather obscure circumstances.
For this week, that’s been the Ruttle Report.
