Susan Kirkland (bio)

"You'll always miss 100% of the shots you don't take."
Wayne Gretzky

My high school art teacher asked me what I wanted to do for a living. "I thought I'd be a teacher," I said in wistful teenage tones. "That's a good thing for a woman to do," he said snickeringly. I glared at him for a moment. He had singlehandedly expanded my brain to include more than the Beatles; with Fireside Theater, Joni Mitchell, Procol Harum, Jefferson Airplane (and, no kids, it's not Jefferson Starship), Crosby, Stills and Nash, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and Bob Dylan. We had our heads adjusted at the same time we painted scenery for the senior play, Auntie Mame. "There's a scholarship competition for art school. Let's get your artwork together and send it in. The deadline is tomorrow, but we can overnight it." With great uncertainty, I decided to say no to the manager job at the new triplex movie house down the street and opted to fly by the seat of my pants into the unknown.

"The torment of precautions often exceeds the dangers to be avoided. It is sometimes better to abandon oneself to destiny."
Napoleon Bonaparte

At age 19, a junior in college, I bought a copy of a new magazine called Playgirl. After spending more than 6 hours a week for the last 2 years with nude models in figure drawing and painting, I was unimpressed. After all, Larry Flynt's Hustler was just down the street, and his home was next door to the elite Columbus School for Girls, much to the horror of parents. Playgirl's big grinning naked guys, stark product lighting, and catalog layout was disappointing. Without romance, the appeal to a female audience was limited. So, I sat down and wrote a nice long letter to the editor on my notebook paper in blue ball point pen, listing all my ideas for improving their publication. Ahem, no chuckling from the audience, please--not yet, anyway. I ripped the pages out of my three-ring notebook, thought a moment about how, maybe, I should trim the edges, but decided it wasn't important. A couple of weeks later, my phone rang down the hall. I raced to answer it. A man's voice said, "Hello, I am looking for Susan Kirkland." I identified myself, and learned he was Ira Ritter, Director of Advertising for Playgirl Magazine. He had received my letter from the editor and shared it with the publisher. They were completely enthralled with my ideas and wanted me to fly out to LA and work for them.

You may laugh now.

"Many great ideas have been lost because the people who had them could not stand being laughed at."
Anonymous

My first real agency job was in the same building as my friend, the Egyptian structural engineer. One day at lunch, he talked about Houston, Texas. "There's a real oil boom there; big business and big money. That's the place to be." I decided it was the place for me to be, too, when the sausage client's son took my job at the agency. So out of the blue, I moved to Texas; with a lust for adventure but little else. I quickly found a job in the newspaper (though word is that doesn't happen) at a small animation studio doing Texaco and Shell training films, Brown & Root (Halliburton) Nuclear Power Plant slide shows and a variety of other projects in oil and gas. It was like moving to a different country, y'all, where the sun always shined, the snow never fell, and it was as hot as habañeros.

"Never be afraid to try something new. Remember amateurs built the ark; professionals built the Titanic."
Anonymous

My friends in Ohio and NYC arranged a dinner rendezvous in Toronto one weekend. There was a delay in my flight from Houston and I was late. Like the mad hatter, I raced to my small hotel's elevator, only to find it stopped on the floor above me. When the door opened, I hurried in, toe-tappingly perturbed at the delay. It only took a second for me to realize the actor Richard Burton and his wife were standing behind me in tails, a diamond tiara and a dinner cape, no less; it was way too much artistic expression for that little space. When we landed, I quickly exited and picked up a newspaper on the way to Simpsons on the Strand to meet my friends; followed close behind by Mr. Burton, who was incredibly short for an actor of such, well, stature. I glanced over the newspaper and there, on the gallery page, was an opening for my CCAD painting teacher, Jim Thornton. He had returned to Toronto some years earlier and was launching his first show. I dropped in the next day to his shock and surprise. He asked me if I had been to the King Tut exhibit at the Art Gallery of Ontario because tomorrow was the last day of the sold-out show. Now, that's an idea. The next day, I walked over to the museum just to see the crowd; the lines were snaking along the sidewalk and around the corner. In an outdoor kiosk, three gallery employees assisted visitors and answered questions. I had a question; "Are there any ticket scalpers selling tickets out here?" One older lady looked up, smiled and said, "You won't need those scalpers. I have a ticket here that someone just turned in. That will be two dollars. You can go right in."

"Jump off the edge and build your wings on the way down."
James Thurber

Throw yourself into the arms of fate whenever possible. Chances are, the outcome will be better than anything you could plan. After all, your Higher Power has a better view of the big picture.

"Put a grain of boldness into everything you do."
Baltasar Gracian

AUTHOR'S NOTE: If you enjoy my blog, you'll enjoy my book even more. It's filled with all the characters I've met and a full spectrum of experiences that will prepare you to face the unknown in freelance. Even if you've been freelancing for years, you'll find new information and a trustworthy mentor to stand by your side through thick and thin in Start and Run a Creative Services Business. Excerpts are available online at my website. This is the book I needed when I first started out.