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We all have opportunities which crop up in our lives. Some of them are obviously big deals with large potential ramifications for our lives, a significant promotion or option to travel or the chance to spend your life with someone who sparks your soul. Others seem incidental, a choice to visit a friend or chance sample a new TV show or musical artist.
Most of the time it’s almost impossible to see where exactly an opportunity might lead us or the impact it could potentially have but the only way we can ever find out is by saying ‘yes’ to them. This is the story of how one rather easy and seemingly small ‘yes’ led to, among other things, a featured TEDx talk with over 675K views.
Back in 2007 and colleague and I were asked by one of his friends if we could help out with a local theater festival event he was trying to arrange, a small LGBTQ festival with singers, theatrical monologues, spoken word, and drag performers. About a month or so out from the festival weekend he lost one of his participating acts and wondered if we might be able to throw together a little bit of dancing to fill the suddenly empty performance slot.
I should note that my colleague, Trevor, and I had been friends for several years at this point having met through the ballroom organization we…