I’m hoping to find more freelance voiceover work in Nashville so I thought I’d take a chance and start posting demo “videos” on YouTube. This is a small sample of my work from 1989 to 2007. Too bad my career mostly predated the age of MP3s! I had to track these down from reels and VHS tapes. Not. Kidding.
On my way out of a big meeting (“big” meaning I was with our president and executive director) with a small group of colleagues recently, one of my colleagues approached me with some brilliant advice. I was somewhat on the spot in the meeting in the sense that many of the questions being asked about the promotions of two major projects were meant to be answered by Communications, aka me. And Communications didn’t have much to offer outside of “I have a strategy but I need more information to implement what’s in my head.”
(The old radio person in me always manages to rise to the occasion and offer opinions and comments, sometimes unsolicited, to a discussion. I almost babble but I quickly remind myself that in the presence of executive leadership, it’s better not to.)
To all the penny-pinching, coupon-cutting, swimming-in-bills, barely-making-ends-meet, two-job-holding, work-your-butt-off, feel-like-giving-up-sometimes, cry-yourself-to-sleep, taking-life-a-day-at-a-time, drowning-in-grace single moms: Happy Mother’s Day.
God is good and sees your situation. Take comfort. He knows.
“You are the God who sees me, ” for she said, “I have now seen the One who sees me.” Genesis 16:13
My @tumblr story was picked as one of their favorites! WHAAAT. http://t.co/M6cKhK03—
Kyera (@kyerabee) May 09, 2012
And to think I introduced her to Tumblr in May 2007. Yup, she will far exceed me in every way.
I was in DC recently at Grace Covenant Church and got to chit-chat with one of our missionaries. It doesn’t take much to get me on a soapbox and start talking about the power of communications and self-marketing.
Grace came over to “confess” that she needed to get better at social and that she was trying to figure out the best strategy to go about creating a plan that wouldn’t seem like she was promoting herself.
It’s all I needed. The door was opened so I walked right in.
I can look back at this some day and know I helped make it happen.
#AriseDurham is trending!!! Yay, @thelmabowlen! http://t.co/VFiFJJlu—
Kyera (@kyerabee) March 24, 2012
I’m a statistic. I fall under the category of “heard the Gospel before the age of twenty-five.” People who keep tabs on statistics when people hear the Gospel say that most do as young adults. That was me. But unlike many people my age in 1991 Manila, I was a young mom and wife at twenty-two. Unlike my peers who were enjoying college life, I dropped out at nineteen, pregnant and barely two years in to getting a degree in Literature from the comfortably Catholic De La Salle University.
It was fear of the future and the unknown that pushed me into a relationship with my Lord and Savior. The Gulf War had broken out, and I was deathly afraid of the future. I think becoming a parent made me fearful. “What kind of world would my daughter grow up in?” constantly raced through my mind and kept me up at night.
I know, right. I haven’t been doing voiceover at my previous level and yet here I am dishing out advice.
I got an inquiry in my inbox through my About.me profile on how to get started in voiceover. The person wanted any tips I could give. As I was answering the email, I figured I’d turn it into a blog post!
I’ve had to eat a lot of humble pie when it comes to voiceover. It’s just an entirely different ballgame here in the US. Competition is stiff. And for someone who works a full-time job, it’s not a priority for me at the moment to start at the bottom of the rung. That being said, the following tips I came up with are all part of my experience and personal journey, which I love sharing.
When people ask me what I’ve been learning from Kem Meyer at the Communications Strategy Coaching Network of Wired Churches, I always have to pause and think how best to describe the experience.
When our group of eight, known as Team Diggity, met for the first time the first week of March at Granger Community Church, we were strangers in a room who had one thing in common — we were all communications managers with titles like director and coordinator. Our job descriptions, similar; our organizations, different; our tenures, varied. The longest in his role, twelve years; the youngest, one month.
I thought it was a stretch when coaching facilitator and author of “Less Clutter. Less Noise.,” Kem, announced within our first fifteen minutes together that we “would become friends whether we liked it or not.” While my first impression was that I was in a room with competent, confident communicators, their turning into my friends didn’t feel likely. I thought we’d be acquaintances on Facebook and Twitter, and in our private Google site, at best.
I don’t know how to describe our journey from Orlando to Nashville any other way than by describing it as an act of God. If you’ve ever read my blog, “Exits and Entrances,” you’re familiar with the adventure that Kyera and I have been on since 2007. From the moment I decided to return to the US after twenty-seven years, to the eight weeks I had to endure not knowing if Kyera would be allowed to follow me, to the first two years of our life here in the US — she for the first time, me for the second time — moving from Orlando to Nashville has been an exciting journey that can only be attributed to God.
Drove a 21' truck with a 15' trailer more than 800 miles, 650 of which in the rain, to Nashville. Exhausted, stoked, grateful, speechless.—
Thelma Bowlen (@thelmabowlen) April 03, 2009
