LESLY SIMMONS, APR

Today there is such pressure to be perfect in an instant. I know everyone feels it–we must know everything about everything to be worth anything. The feeling is self-imposed and reinforced by society at every turn, creating a cycle of unrealistic expectations no reasonable person can meet.

I always feel this pressure. My constant complaint about myself is that I’m not working hard enough, so I stress myself out thinking about how I can work harder in between work, grad school, and the rest of my life. So I felt especially lucky to run across three seemingly random items that all whispered “relax” in my ear.

First I randomly grabbed an old O-The Oprah Magazine from December 2007 and found myself reading the contributors pages, where I ran across a blurb about photographer Joshua Jordan.  He became a full time photographer in 1992, and there he was, doing his first shoot for O Mag, a short 15 years later.

Then on Facebook, I read Peter Shankman’s status update that today was the 11th anniversary of him incorporating The Geek Factory, his communications firm. Everyone knows him for HARO, which has blown up over the past few years, but he’s been at it for a long time.

Then I stumbled across a story in today’s Washington Post about Robert Bealle, a wildlife artist who entered the Federal Duck Stamp Art Contest for 27 YEARS,before winning this year. His work is gorgeous, and yet it took him nearly 30 years to get past second place.

My inspiration moment came when I realized what all these three things were telling me–success takes time. When what we hear is that you need to be a superstar today, that can so easily be forgotten. Our culture is obviously one of instant gratification, so seeing people toil over a dream and reach a certain level of success more than 10, or 15, or nearly 30 years later, is actually exciting! It gives me something to look forward to, and work toward, and grow in to.

So I’m taking some time to step out of the stress and into the enjoyment of my craft, taking a cue from these guys–the practice can only pay off down the road, and I hope it doesn’t take 30 years, but if it does I’ll be patient.

Let me start with what is probably obvious–I have no interest in watching professional wrestling. Even as a kid when my siblings and cousins piled into the car to go see Rowdy Roddy Piper and Hulk Hogan pretend to beat each other up at the Convention Center, I stayed home. That was a long time ago, but WWE is still holding on strong, and it caught my ear last week when when I heard a commercial mention that Al Sharpton would be on as a guest host. Um, exsqueeze me?

Sharpton’s reason for going on the show was to increase awareness of the education achievement gap–turns out he is on a nationwide tour with Newt Gingrich and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to promote the education reform movement. Great cause, and WWE is just the venue to reach those most needing to hear this message. I didn’t see the episode, but I did watch this video on the WWE site to learn more.  From what I read though, the subject of education only came up once, and the rest of the time Rev. Sharpton was the target of misidentification (someone called him Don King) and gentle character barbs.

Out of the three names on the tour, Sharpton was clearly the best of the bunch to go on RAW. He’s the most controversial, and as he said in the video, he’s even an old school wrestling fan! Unfortunately, his personal history was probably enough to keep his message from having much credibility, even though his cause is an honorable one. And when the issue only comes up briefly, who knows if the crowd got anything out of it at all.

That is always an issue with “celebrity” spokespeople. Its hard to know how a message will be received until its out there. You can prepare people to the ends of the earth, but in the end you just have to pray that a spokesperson a) knows that they’re talking about when speaking for a cause or organization, and b) doesn’t commit any past, present or future sin that will take the focus off the words and put it on the individual. Since no one is perfect though, this is hard to do. There are so few spotless celebs and they are always in demand to lend their name to a cause.

Its also important for a celebrity to make sure their appearances don’t impact their own reputations. As a civil rights leader, it raised plenty of eyebrows when Sharpton agreed to go on RAW, considering WWE’s history of racial denigration. After the show his publicist released a statement: “In order to raise awareness and actually do something about the devastating achievement gap in education between kids of color and their white peers the viewership of WWE events is precisely the group of people who need to be reached and involved. Reverend Sharpton has stated repeatedly that all of us must take extraordinary steps to reverse the current trend in education and that unlikely alliances (like with Newt Gingrich) and forums like the WWE should be utilized if they help close the gap.”

I’m all for extraordinary measures–sometimes its those big moves that shake people into action. I’ll be interested to see what some of the other stops on this “tour” are. Maybe we can get Newt Gingrich on an episode of “Real Housewives of Atlanta” to spread the education gospel?