Thankful for the struggles, and the lessons, from a younger me.

When I was 24 I took on a role in TV that was far above my station. It was exhilarating, but mostly terrifying.

As Brian and I arrived in Vancouver I told him with absolute certainly, “I will find a job in two weeks, tops.” It was 1998 Hollywood North, how could I not? I made a list of studios, hit the street, and had three solid offers in two weeks.

Two job offers were in animation production, something I was trained for and could have easily done for a steady paycheque.

The third, came from an Independent Producer who asked me to help him with the business-side of his studio. What did I do? I threw up in my mouth a little and asked, “When can I start?”.

For someone once deathly afraid of failure, why would I take the risk?

Why not! I had a 4-year Fine Arts degree in Film Animation followed by 6-months of TV production experience in Montreal.

My previous job was to cel-check 2D characters on sheets of crisp white paper against elaborately painted backgrounds, ensuring no continuity errors. If a button on a jacket or an ear on a character was missing, I had the privilege of drawing it back in.

I took this sweatshop work seriously, but had way too much fun doing it with some of my former classmates - despite our being managed by a tyrant of a woman who had no soul to speak of.

Eventually I left the French TV scene to move in with the love of my life. For a brief period between living in Montreal and Vancouver, we lived back east while he wrapped up his higher education.

To survive, I took out a small business loan. I was 23.

With the funds I dragged myself through Abode product “bibles” (not called Adobe Creative Suite yet), and learned basic HTML at a university night course on the gentle urging of my beloved - a Sciences guy and evidently a Futurist.?

Still more introvert than ambivert, I stalked small businesses for any type of design or animation project work to pay my backlog of bills. A whopping $40,000 from university student loans, and now this $10,000 small business loan used to buy the Apple hardware and software required - to teach myself to fish.

With my Protestant Maritimer upbringing, faking anything made me feel like a sham. It took every ounce of courage I could muster to put myself out there, but I refused to fail.

Hard work doesn’t always pay well, but it pays off.??

When I accepted this new job from an Indie Producer who promised global travel, (a luxury I imagined was at least a decade away with my debt load), I’d show up to my office and head straight to the washroom. I felt like puking, but it came out the wrong end.

I literally scared the crap out of myself by showing up to work for Gord. Every, single, day.

How does the Shakespearean line go, “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.”? I knew that if I was ever to make it, I had to fake my confidence. Again.

Next thing you know, the wallflower from high school was calling Disney, Sony Pictures,?Alliance Atlantis, BBC Kids, Teletoon France, and so on. All in the name of getting a seat at their respective tables to pitch Gord’s story ideas and license his (one) completed animated series to territories outside the Canadian market. Every time I picked up the phone to dial a new number I was scared, until I got him past gate-keepers and into meetings with decision-makers.

I was loosely in charge of getting Gord and I invited to meetings in L.A. or elsewhere in TV land, and 100% responsible for bringing the world of TV Program Buyers to him at our Telefilm Canada booth at the Palais des Festivals et des Congrès in Cannes that year.

The week-long trade event was called MIPCOM-Junior and Gord’s existing TV series and creative ideas weren’t exactly selling like hotcakes off the Boulevard de la Croisette that year. The fear of failure remained at the core of every other breath I took, but I performed my best for him nonetheless.

Gord wasn’t the easiest person to work for. He schooled me on a few things about the business, forgot to school me on (several) others, and by the time I figured out how much was missing from my onboarding and how little I felt respected as a human, I was in too deep to give up.

And then one morning I saw his bait and switch too.

Standing with Gord behind the curtain in our hidden Telefilm Canada coffee break area, I watched him shake some form of disappointment off his face. And in the most memorable fake-it-til-you-make-it moment from the person I least expected it, he announced to me with big bright eyes and a faked smile, “Well... it’s SHOW TIME!”.

And with that, he launched back out onto the stage of the Entertainment Business, willing to take another punch... with the biggest grin on his face.

Turns out, everyone feels like an imposter some of the time, but it doesn’t mean you quit the show.

By Penny Greening