The year was 1987 … As a 12 year old I was obsessed with hockey. I started playing when I was 6. At the time ESPN had the television rights to broadcast NHL games. Since most games ended late I would only get to catch the first period of some games as I had to go to bed for school the next day. That year I was out a record number of school days, 30 I believe, from being sick (cough, cough) — or at least that is what I would tell my parents and the school nurse.

I hate to admit it, but almost all of the time I wasn’t really sick. You see, ESPN would re-broadcast the games at noon the following day. I had to be home to catch some of the games, especially during the playoffs when games would go into double and triple overtime. As a 12 year old hockey player, watching the drama unfold in sudden death overtime was the most exciting and anticipating thing to watch.

Both my parents worked so it was usually my mother who would have to pick me up from school and drop me off at home and head back to work. I used to flick the thermometer until the mercury went up to a reasonable temperature in order to be sent home by the nurse, usually 100 or 101. For some reason the nurse would always leave her office after putting the thermometer under my tongue.

Other times if I didn’t want to risk going to the nurse, I would take our hair dryer and heat the thermometer up at home. This would get it to the optimum temperature so I wouldn’t even have to go to school at all. Full disclosure, I told my parents a long time ago so this will come as no surprise.

While I would watch the game I would play ‘knee hockey’, which a lot of my teammates and I would do to kill time in hotel hallways while away at hockey tournaments. Knee hockey is basically miniature hockey sticks that allow you to play hockey on your knees and instead of a puck you use a small, golf ball sized, ball with a 2 foot high hockey goal/net. I would envision myself scoring the game winning goal for an NHL team and reenact highlight-reel style goals that they would reply on ESPN’s flagship show, SportsCenter.

In the 80’s there was no such thing as Blu-ray players or HD cameras; there were VCR’s and massive sized video cameras that would record video onto bulky VHS tapes. Our VCR had these cool special features (well, cool for the 1980’s) where you could dub/add music to a VHS tape if you had an audio source. My dad was able to get a good deal on a video camera from a friend of his who owned a video store (Yea, remember those days!) and would use it to record most of my hockey games.

While I was home sick (cough, cough) from school one day, I decided to see if I could add music to one of my hockey videos. I read the manual to see how to go about doing it. The only audio source we had available at the time was my dad’s record player (nothing beats vinyl :))

I followed the instructions and was able to do it. It was like magic at the time. Once I was able to do that, I remember thinking, wouldn’t it be cool to make my own ESPN-like highlight reel of just the goals and cool plays from my game tapes.

Well, another great feature of our VCR was it allowed for another video input source and I was able to jack our VHS camera into the VCR. I would fast forward my hockey tapes from the camera until a goal or exciting play happened, then cue up the VCR and then record only that short clip onto a blank VHS tape in our VCR. I did that over and over until I got all the highlights I wanted for that particular highlight reel. After that, I would hook up the record player into the VCR and dub in the music. At the time, it was just an awesome thing I was able to do and share with my friends and teammates. I got the same thrill to see the look on their faces when they saw themselves in the highlight reel as I did watching myself.

Do you want to see it!? … This is the first one I ever did as a 12 year old. Born in the USA by Bruce Springsteen was our team’s theme song that year.  This highlight reel was of my youth team in the state tournament where we ultimately won the Connecticut State Championship. Thanks for the motivation Bruce!

I continued to do this for my high school and college games.

Aside from the dream of becoming a professional hockey player, I always wanted to work for ESPN. Graduating college studying Marketing and Communications, I struggled to get a communications job afterwards, so I went to the Connecticut School of Broadcasting. I loved it! It was hands on training on various equipment working both in front of the camera and behind the scenes. They are known for their high job placement rate and I thought this would be my ticket into ESPN. After graduating, me and another student had an opportunity to do camera and audio work for a live television church service every day. It was obviously no ESPN but it was somewhere for us to get our feet wet while waiting for the opportunity at ESPN to open up. This was the same path a lot of other students took to get into ESPN.

The downside was that the pay was not great. I think it was borderline minimum wage and the commute was an hour each way. After 6 month I decided to leave to get a ‘real’ job. I remember the priest who ran the television service at the Office Of TV and Radio for the Archdiocese ask me,

“Are you sure you want to leave, you’re doing a great thing here, working for God?”

Although I really didn’t want to leave as I worked with a lot of really great people and my friend from school, I remember thinking,

“Ya, but God’s not payin’ the bills.”

At the time I thought, I just couldn’t stay, not for the pay I was making. I was losing money every week compared to the college loans and other bills piling up.

Sure enough I left for what I thought were greener pastures. I got a temp job at a local insurance company that led to full time. I was making a salary and thought I was on top of the world. I would stay there for 6 years and tack on about 30+ lbs. In the end I was miserable.

At this point I was married and my wife was pregnant with our first child. As a tenured teacher she had the better job security so I left the insurance company and started a web design agency. I did this mostly at night while staying home with our kids during the day. It helped pay the bills but still wasn’t fulfilling.

Once my children where all in school, I decided to go back into the corporate world for more steady income where I currently am now. Although it allows me some creativity there was still something missing.

After going through the loss of my father in 2014, battling a staff infection due to my gluten-allergy, and potential of layoffs at work in 2016; I spun into a depression that I could not shake. I couldn’t understand why I could not snap out of it. Everything else in my life was great. I have a great family, a roof over my head, clothes, and food on the table. I had everything I needed, but still something was missing. PURPOSE.

One of the things I always struggled with was my weight, so I decide to change the narrative I kept telling myself. I needed to change my old habits and create new ones. I needed to become something more than I was and stop feeling sorry for myself.

I was tired of making excuses for my weight. Always wanting to be a professional athlete/hockey player I would look at the athletes who were out of shape and would say, man if that was my job I would have time to get and be in shape. I would unjustly project my insecurities on them.

But now I said to myself, since I’m struggling in this area of my life, it’s time to make getting in shape and taking back my health my full time job. As mentioned in previous articles, I started slow and incrementally increased reps and time week by week.

I started to tell myself I am a professional athlete. Every day over and over. As I started to see the results the better I felt and the anxiety started to dissipate. Everyday I filled myself with positive motivational videos. Then one day while I was planking, looking at the small screen on my iPhone, watching the motivational videos on YouTube … This overwhelming warm sensation covered me, and I heard this still small voice whisper,

“You’re going to be all right. You can stop now.”

I began to cry uncontrollably .. As I was watching these videos and heard the voice, it suddenly became clear, this is my PURPOSE. My purpose is to CREATE. YouTube was the tool to express my gifts — It was like God or my father had provided me with the answer I was looking for. It was there all along, I had just buried it. Suddenly, at that moment, I was taken back to when I was 12 years old again. All the stress and anxiety left me.

I had suppressed my gift by all the noise in life. I gave up my passion for what I believed was security.

What was so surreal was just a few weeks earlier I started to pray for help. In absolute surrender, I asked for support and a way out, promising God that I would be grateful and do His work and make it my mission to help others in the same situation. And He did! So now I am doing my best to fulfill the promise I made.

Shortly after, I found out that the new church we joined has a video bumper group, which helps develop transitional videos for our services. One of the first things I did was volunteer to join the group. It was like God opened up the door to say here’s your chance.

This weekend our church will be premiering the first video I helped produce and create and I am truly excited to see something I worked on shown to such a large audience. Once I can share it with you I will post it below:

It’s probably the hardest and longest video project I’ve ever worked on. I don’t know where this will take me but it is funny how things come full circle. I left my first job with the live television service due to not enough income, and now I’m back, creating to help serve others.

I realized that often our gifts are the things we loved to do as children. I look at my kids today and encourage them to follow their passion, no matter what that is because you never know where it might take you. Everyone has a gift!

Godspeed on your journey!

For a copy of my book “How To Build A Level Up Mindset: Cheat Codes For Success, Health, and Happiness” and The Level Up Mindset System Workbook, to help you focus on mindset growth, personal development and get clear on your goals and vision, click the image below: