It’s REALLY okay to start over!

“Don’t be afraid to start over again. this time you’re not starting from scratch, you’re starting from experience.” -Unknown

I remember last summer feeling like I regressed by coming back to Memphis, even though I knew it was temporary. The goal was to work on the series “Bluff City Law” and go from there. Well…let’s just say I got more than I bargained for…

“We plan, God laughs”

I’m sure you can imagine there were plenty of people who were confused about how I could live in a place like L.A. and come back to a place like Memphis. I got some variation of “Why you come back?”, “How long you here?”, something about how I’m not the same person they knew before I left (thanks, by the way), among a number of other things. I enjoyed catching up with old people and meeting new people, then with me working on this show, a reality show, and ESPN-it was the most fulfilled I felt while staying there. At this rate, I could move back to Memphis permanently! Or so I thought….

A huge part of me missed being in L.A.; with the tribe I made, church I joined, connections, weather, endless opportunities, and being surrounded by so many like-minded people was everything. But on the flip side, being fulfilled in Memphis for that time had me thinking maybe that’s where I needed to be, especially since things didn’t “work out” like I’d hoped staying in LA for the better part of two years prior to returning. The plan was to stay there, contribute to the city in arts and ministry, and work the local film scene getting work whenever I could, but that was MY plan. And again, ‘We plan, God laughs’.

There was definitely a fear that “What if things work out the same way upon coming back to LA”? But what was there to lose? I came back at the beginning of a pandemic having no idea things would turn out how they would, but also having no idea that things would work out much quicker than I expected and much quicker the second time around.

Having the right people around to encourage, push, and pray with/for you is so necessary. Sometimes others can project their fears on you, especially if there’s a chance you’ll “get ahead” of them in some way. Then there are people who’ll try to convince you not to leave if you don’t know where you’ll stay or work, while they stay home with no sense of direction for their own lives. I’m a witness of that coming from a place with a terrible crabs-in-a-barrel mentality (yes Memphis, I’m talking about you). I know a good handful of people (including myself) who just got a one way ticket and packed their bags, and things started to fall into place. I’ve also been on the side where you have housing and a job prior to moving, and things still went awry. That’s exactly why I didn’t last long in Atlanta, because I went off my own plan as opposed to praying for guidance of what God wanted me to do.

Fast forward to the past few months, I would not have thought that a Producer would reach out to me to work a shoot that ended up being for Megan Thee Stallion x Fashion Nova so soon after returning to LA. Then, within a week to have an Executive Producer of a major TV show reach out to me about possibly working right next to and assisting them. You may call it bragging, but I call it a testimony, because my mind is truly blown. I’m writing this as I’m getting ready to leave and head to set for a film I got asked to work on, by one of the AD’s from a previous project that I worked on…in MEMPHIS. Talk about full circle…

The point I’m bringing home is that it really is okay to start over, because nothing you go through is ever in vain. Forget possibly getting shamed by others, what they’ll say or think, none of that matters. If anything, this pandemic has shown that the unthinkable can happen even during the toughest times, so go after what’s YOURS!