Why ‘Change’ is inevitable, but becomes what you make it.

Change can be the very best thing and the very worst thing. It has been so for me on many occasions in the past, and usually, when it hits you in the face it isn’t welcome. 
We can’t control our lives, things happen to us. But what defines us is how we deal with them, what action we take, and how we come out of it at the other end.
I want to share with you some stories about a couple of people who were forced into making changes that required some hard decisions as well. These film stars each have a different story to tell but the outcomes have a lot of similarities.

​Why does Danny Trejo get all the ‘hard guy’ parts?

Danny stars in many movies, appearing mostly as a tough prisoner, a hitman, gang member, or drug dealer. Razor Charlie, Johnny Six Toes and Crazy Joe are just some of his screen character names. His movies have grossed over $2 billion, and he can count himself as very successful. But this hasn’t always been the case. Danny didn’t go to acting school, he didn’t have parents that ploughed every last cent into his education. He had to learn life the hard way. 

There is a reason why he does so well in these roles – he was once one of them. When younger, he spent at least 11 years in an out of prison for armed robbery and various related crimes. He was able to turn his life around, though, by throwing himself first into boxing, and then beating drug addiction. When he got a job as a drug counsellor in the early 1980’s it led to him helping a young guy overcome his battles against addiction while on the set for the 1985 film Runaway Train. Hearing that he was also a trained boxer, the director paid him to train Eric Roberts for the fight scenes in the film. This got him noticed, and then he found himself being offered parts in several movies.
Danny had needed to make drastic changes to his life before his acting career took off, and a result his life changed very much for the better.

​Who put Angelina Jolie together?

Angelina is today the very picture of togetherness. She is unarguably a great actress, a humanitarian, a UN Goodwill ambassador and a good mother. 
What a lot of people don’t remember is that not that long ago things were very different. It would be fair to say Angelina was somewhat weird. She came from an acting background but parental separation, isolation at high school and a series of addictions and depression left her looking like one of life’s ‘also rans’ as far as acting was concerned. She wore vials of blood as jewellery, and by 20, had a serious drug problem and twice tried to commit suicide.

Things came to light three years ago when some old footage from the 90s was released that showed her as high as a kite under the influence of cocaine. It was apparently shot by her drug dealer at the time. Angelina did a spectacular job of turning things around simply because she wanted to. She adopted a child and knew she had to make those changes. Today, she couldn’t be more together. The person responsible for it is herself.

Whatever happened to Rick Moranis?

Whatever happened to Rick Moranis?
Who doesn’t remember Rick? During the nineteen eighties and early nineties he was possibly the top supporting comic actor in major box office hits. His repertoire includes  Lewis Tully in both the Ghostbuster films, Wayne Szalinski in Honey I shrunk the Kids, and he also featured in a heap of other big screen hits such as Parenthood, My Blue Heaven, Spaceballs  The Flintstones, and Splitting hairs, to name but a few. Since the turn of the century he has done very little by way of acting. So what happened?
Well, Rick suffered a tragedy. His dear wife Ann died of breast cancer in 1997 aged just 35 and Rick was left with two young children. He decided to make the best job he could of bringing them up and being the Dad they deserved. 

"I went from that to being at home with a couple of little kids, which is a very different lifestyle. But it was important to me. I have absolutely no regrets whatsoever. My life is wonderful." (Rick Moranis referring to his time working on The Ghostbusters films).
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For these guys change was enforced, it needed to happen, and, as of today all three have made the best of it. 
​It got me thinking about my own life situations now that we are near the end of the year. I haven’t got anything terrible or crazy going on but I come across problems – stuff that doesn’t work out, things that get in the way, almost on a daily basis. So how do I do when it comes to dealing with such things?

I look back on 2017 and feel that it has been a bit like a river rushing by and I’m supposed to be on a boat sailing along with it, but I’m not, I’m stuck watching from the bank. Or it feels like I’m that small child again in the playground waiting to hop on the roundabout when it slows enough for me to make that leap . . . but I never did quite get on board, too much stuff just got in the way. 
In summary, I missed out on a few things, especially in the writing world. But what I take from all this are the positives. Some things have gone very well, I’ve sold some books and I have kept writing. My other little business is doing okay. The family is all good and I’m about to become a grandparent again (before Christmas please . . . !). 
One thing I have learned is exactly what I talked about at the end of the summer in my last blog post:
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‘Why everybody needs to take a wrong turning sometimes’
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You need to make mistakes to learn, and when a change is enforced upon you the remedy is always the same.

‘You have to try and make the right decisions for the situation.’

As I sit here writing this, really, I’m quite happy. Not because I’ve achieved all my dreams for 2017, I haven’t, but because I made a change and I’ve seen it through. 
The last three months have been tough, I haven’t been to bed the right side of midnight once. Many hours have been spent working hard late at night or early in the morning on top of all the family commitments and my day job. It was necessary to complete the challenge I set myself.
I managed to get my mini-series completed. 
The idea was hatched in August when I realised my larger work was nowhere near ready to launch and I wanted to get some fresh stuff out there for my readers. The first story was released in September, and the 3-week cycle of stories was only interrupted once, by myself when I rejected one of the proposed stories at the eleventh hour. That was a hard decision to make, it threw the next couple of weeks into turmoil but I think the resulting fourth story was more pivotal as a result, and it became longer, giving readers a bit more to chew on before the finale.
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So why am I telling you this and what has it got to do with change?

Well, I wanted this latest offering of stories to be a bit more than just a collection of stories, so I had the idea of involving the whole concept of needing to change and regretting missed opportunities into the story plot. 

I will be honest, I had no idea that it would fit together so well. Sometimes you find the message you want to give finds it’s way through in the writing whatever you do.
Those who know me well will tell you I don’t always do things by the book. This isn’t a deliberate ‘be different’ action on my part, things just seems to work out that way.
As I was putting it together I realised the book had to be called after the last story, not the first one, (which is more usually the case.) I didn’t write it in chapters, I wrote separate stories as they came to me, but connected them by keeping the same unnamed character and linking some of the events throughout.
I’ve had these stories out for free and at a reduced price over the last few weeks and I’ve decided that a couple of them at least will remain perms-free.
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  You can find out all about the series here. 

None of us will escape bad things ever happening to us for our entire lives, and somewhere along the line we all make mistakes. So you, I and everybody else will at some stage be faced with decisions that involve change. Just remember, when these things happen and drag us down, there is always a way to overcome them, 
Doesn’t everybody deserve a second chance?
Find out why Christmas 1975 was, for one man, like simply no other. . .
                                                                    Second Chance
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However you are planning on finishing your year, a very merry Christmas to you , and to many more to come.