What My Husband Really Does For a Living

It’s always hard to explain what Whitney does for a living. Maybe the best way is to say that it’s what every boy would do if you put all the things boys thinks are cool together, and made it into a job.

He makes things.
For movies and commercials.

Like a severed head. (It scares the neighborhood children in our basement.)
A bed that will sway down when someone sits on it, but not kill Whoopie Goldberg who is lying under the bed.
He built and rigged a book to shake and burst into flames for Angels in America.
He operated fake elevator doors to open for Damien Lewis and Mandy Patinkin for a Homeland promo.
He weakened a barn enough so that a stunt driver could crash a car through the barn wall but not so weak that the barn would fall down and kill him.
He sculpted three large dolphins and repaired a six-foot tall eyeball at the science museum.
He made a grill out of a beer keg.
He makes guns that flash and pop but don’t kill.
He fabricated a 20-foot cornucopia for the Thanksgiving parade.
He sculpted chessboard pieces in the shape of the UNC Chapel Hill buildings.
To name a few.

I can hear all the 13-year-old boys now…
“Where can you go to get that sort of job?”
You don’t.
You create it.

He learned to solder various metals, work with wood, suction-mold plastic, handle pyrotechnics and work with electricity and electronics just because it was interesting and fun.

With the world-changing so rapidly, many of the jobs my kids know about now will not be around when they graduate from college.
In these fast-moving times, you have to surf the waves of change and create the job and the life you want.

I used to think you looked at what jobs there are out there, like a menu, and picked one to pursue.
I also used to think that you should work extra hard at the things you aren’t good at so you are a well-rounded person.
My thoughts have changed.

Here’s the new model:
Look at what you like to do.
What you really have a passion for.
What you can’t imagine getting paid for because it’s so fun and comes so easily.

Then look at what you are good at.
Look at where those two things intersect and then do it.
A lot.

If you are in your zone of genius (which you should be if you would do it for no money and you are good at it), talk to everyone about it (you probably can’t stop yourself from talking about it anyway) and people will pay you.

In the link to the Jeff Gordon commercial above, Whitney is the one rigging the taxi with mini hidden cameras and installing the Plexiglas divider to turn this Chevy Caprice into a taxi. He’s in there around the 30-second mark. For a second.  Don’t blink.

What does my husband do for a living?
Play.

(BTW – This prank is really real.  How rare when you get to know for sure.  And Jeff Gordon had an absolute blast.)