I owe my career and my happiness to Chris Martin. Not the lead singer of Coldplay, though that would be a better story, I mean a good friend I met at Western Michigan University.
One day an 18-year-old Ryan was sitting on a futon watching movies and ignoring the ever-growing mountain of Biology homework he had. I complained to Chris about how I just wanted to watch movies all day. Without missing a beat, Chris said simply “Why don’t you just make them then?”
…. I had no idea that was an option.
I found out Western had a film and media program and within days, I switched my major. I bugged the equipment manager every day until he let me take a camera out (I wasn’t in a media class yet so I wasn’t allowed to take them out), and from there never stopped filming, editing, learning, and doing everything I could to tell stories.
Now I am happy as a clam finding new ways to tell stories; be it film-making, podcasting, graphic design, or whatever I can to help people tell their stories.