THE DEFINTION OF SUCESS and IT'S COST: Part one.
"The Desires of your heart will be measured in the sacrifices you are willing to make in order to achieve them." -Troy Baker.
My name is Faith Jacobs, and I can't explain to you what happened, but somehow, in the course of seven years I went from a nobody to being someone who has had a few major things happen to her, including becoming a published author, a self-producing indie director, historical freelance researcher, a voice actor, and more.
The story of my climb to being somebody begins in 2020, the world has shut down for a global pandemic, it is March 16th, I've just left college in the last year, a place I shall never see again. I don't know I won't go back, I don't yet understand that the financial strain is too much, but that spring, I recall that I have done four years' worth of schooling as a History/General Studies major and as a history and general studies major, I was on the deans list twice in the four years there, worked my behind off to have a decent grade point average while facing both ableist teachers and fellow students whom I'm sure hated me, on top of a severe depression, loneliness, coming off two years of a verbally and explosively abusive relationship with someone whom shall not be named, enduring a circle of not so good friends who would later abandon me in the silence of an unforeseen grief, (though there was a rare few teachers who did champion me and it is they who were the best parts of my schooling.
Of course, the last thing I did with my school was attend a one night voice acting class in 2019 that would forever change the course of my life and would begin me on the path to where I now am.
If you had met me in 2017, I would have told you I did not want to go to college. I did not want this, I was not ready. But I wasn't listened to and I went, and those were the most miserable years of my life. I commuted, the college had no dorm, and suffice to say that while I was going out more often than not, for some reason that wasn't ok. I will never understand why the early years of one's adulthood is a period marred where your independence is questioned and people think you ought to be scolded day in and day out. To sum up my four years of college, i don't really remember it, mainly because for four years of my life I was burnt out, depressed, melancholic, and learned I was autistic before school, which led to ableism, bullying, and cruelty from adults. And that is what I remember.
What I also know is that during my college days, it was then that I decided to pursue what I had been dreaming of since I was twelve years old, and that was voice acting.
As a little girl, I had a stutter due to medication that I was on, and I was often made fun of by my peers. They bullied me, excluded me, ignored me, and silence was the worst thing I could have ever experienced as a child. They pushed me, they left me out, they didn't want me around, saving one girl who too was also treated as an outcast, she was autistic, and I had no idea that I was, but we got along, and I learned that it is the disabled and the different who are more loving than the non disabled and the non autistic. To be fair, they always had been. The autistic boys i knew growing up were kinder than the non autistic ones, I preferred their company to anyone's, at least among them I wasn't going to be bullied.
I'm sure you're wondering how this all ties in to my point at the start. I assure you it does.
All my life I have faced bullying. Non obvious bullying and people treating me as if I didn't belong or as if I didn't deserve to find a place where I did.
At long last, however, I did find my place, after discovering a James Arnold Taylor vlog video about voice acting on YouTube, and falling into discovering people like Troy Baker, Dee Bradley Baker, and various other voice actors like Rob Paulson or Rodger Craig smith, I could name anyone to be fair, I had probably discovered them at a young age and was fascinated by the world of Voice actors, that upon watching a little Cartoon called Tron Uprising, I took my shot at trying to match the lips and recorded myself on my little Purple 3ds at the time in a manner akin to voice dubbing. Mind you I did this for myself, I was only a child at the time, I had no YouTube channel I could put this up on, but once I began that, I began to write stories, star wars stories mind you, and record them with sound effects in the background. I wanted to be a voice actor, I wanted to be a creator, I wanted to be something like I had heard in all those audiobooks and radio theatre dramas, I just didn't have the tools, I didn't even have a phone. I just had my old OS Snow leopard apple computer, YouTube, the ability to write some stories on a computer, I didn't even have a google account. But by the time I reached high school, I was on the path to being an audio drama creator.
No one could take this from me. Though they laughed at it and said, "Oh Faith, that's cute". I was dead serious. I was going to bring something to life, I was going to be a voice actor.
Fast forward to my college days, I have no mic, I have no laptop computer, I have a barely working cellphone and I have GarageBand, I have retro replay with Troy Baker and Nolan North on Thursdays when I'm on break from my classes, I have people who are angry at me because I'm autistic and facing a world I know nothing about, sensory issues that aren't my fault, information overload, and a whole other world that they laugh about. I'm more alone than ever, and I begin to sing, I write lyrics and I sing my heart out, I get a little bit of traction, i have my heart broken and the depression settles in, I'm a young woman now, I'm not even trying to be a voice actor anymore. Who would believe in me?
And then it happens, after all this chaos, the year before my last year of college, I go to a one night voice acting class, I stand up in front of the very first professional mic I've ever been near, I know you don't touch the mic, I listen to the workshop's teacher from New York, I read my script, a cold read, I slate my name, I read the lines, I get good feedback, I feel as if I have a line of voice actors behind me telling me I belong, it is me and the mic alone, the workshop fades away, I belong here, i belong behind this mic, I speak, and then it is over, but in the words of obi wan kenobi, "These are your first steps".
I found my place. I know where I belong.
***
to be continued.
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