Some of you may have already noticed this, but it’s football season.

Now, I happen to be a big football fan, but I also happen to be a big San Francisco 49ers fan. The problem with that is that I live smack dab in the middle of New York Giants territory. Yep, most of my friends, my co-workers, and even my wife are all Giants fans. The Niners are hoping to end a six year losing streak this season (and that’s a big “if”), but even through all of the pain and suffering of the past six seasons, I’ve remained a die-hard fan. Surrounded by Giants fans who are constantly telling me that I should switch teams or give up on the Niners or become a Giants fan, I hold fast and stand by the team I’ve supported for over two decades.

I know I’m not alone in that. A lot of people are like me in that regard, supporting teams that have been perennially awful. Heck, even the Detroit Lions still have  fans. If a team gets out there and makes an effort, even if they lose people will still stick with them through thick and thin, no matter what their friends or family might say.

All of this football rivalry got me thinking about people who are starting out in voice acting. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve watched give up on their marketing efforts–many times after just a few months–because their friends and family aren’t supportive, or because those same people tell them that they can’t be successful. What boggles my mind is how somebody can stick with a losing sports team for year after year after year, but as soon as they come up against some adversity in real life, they throw in the towel. How does that make sense?

So stick with your team; this time, the team is you. If there are people around you who are naysayers, just put them in the same category as the people who make fun of your favorite sports team. After all, it took the Boston Red Sox 86 years to win a World Series, and I don’t know of a single fan in Red Sox Nation who didn’t stick by them throughout it all.

If sports fans can stick by a losing team for eight decades, don’t you owe it to yourself to do the same?

“Life Is Short. Opera Is Long.”

I saw that on a T-shirt once. It made me laugh out loud. Having never been a fan of opera (sorry, opera lovers), I got quite a kick out of it, because the idea of sitting in a theater and watching large costumed people sing in a foreign language falsetto at the top of their lungs for four hours seems somewhat tantamount to torture to me.

Of course, at the time, I missed a couple of the deeper meanings of that shirt. Looking back on it today, I see a couple of distinct messages at work in that shirt’s slogan.

“Life is short,” the shirt said. Boy, isn’t that the truth? Every day, I look back at the day before it and wonder exactly where it went and how it got there so fast. I’m trying desperately to hold on to the hope that I won’t one day blink and wake up and find that another 20 years of my life have gone by, although I suspect that’s inevitable. So I try (and sometimes I succeed more than others) to really live life unafraid. It’s not that I’m going out skydiving or quitting my job to follow a music group around the country, but I really have spent the past several years of my life trying to open myself up to new things, whether it’s trying a new food or a new genre of music on my iPod, or adopting a new attitude or taking on a new challenge. It’s not always easy, but I can tell you one thing it has always been: rewarding.

And that leads me to the “Opera is long” portion of the shirt. In all honesty, I still have yet to sit through an opera. The difference is, now if the opportunity ever arises, I might just give it a shot. Do I think I’ll fall in love with it and suddenly become an opera aficionado? Probably not. But I’ll never know for sure unless I try it out. I mean, really, what’s the worst that can happen? I lose a few hours to a new and potentially interesting experience that didn’t turn out to be as enjoyable as I hoped. That’s not the end of the world as far as I see it. So don’t be surprised if one of these days you run into me in full tuxedo and white gloves at some big opera event; I might just have decided that the time had come to try something new.

And, hey, maybe after all this, the shirt was just meant to be funny, and I’m purely extrapolating deeper meanings here. But I’m choosing to look at it as a reminder that the world’s a big, exciting place and that life is too short not to at least try to experience as much of it as I can.

After all, what have I got to lose?