Friday night I went to the baseball game. Now I will admit that I didn't watch much baseball, I spent most of the night catching up with old friends and walking around. It was nice because I haven't seen some of these people since last October. While I was walking around there was a rainbow behind the stadium. It was a complete rainbow, all the colors and you could see both ends. It was beautiful. I took a picture of it with my phone and didn't think twice about it.
That was until I was looking at that picture as the background on my phone. There is something symbolic about rainbows. Rainbows are like small messages from God. He sent one to Noah when he was on the ark and I believe like other small things in life rainbows are sent to us to send some kind of message. The exact message may not be clear to all and will more than likely vary from person to person but it is a message, a symbol.
I believe I was in that place at that time seeing that rainbow because God was pointing out that I was on the right path. I finally feel at ease and at peace with leaving the baseball team. It was not what I was supposed to be doing but it will always be a part of me and the friendships and connections I made while there will always be with me. There is a peacefulness that comes over me when I see a rainbow in the sky and it's the same peacefulness I feel towards everything I have been through in the past. It helped me grow and become the person I am but it's over now. I have moved on and will continue to. I have my friends from my various stages in life and they will always be there. Some will be more prominent then others but I will always have them in my life in some way or another.
I have made peace with the regrets that I had about how I left things with the baseball team. I wish I could be more involved and help out more but I feel like I am better off just being a fan this year. I will help when and if I'm called on because I'm not the kind of person who can turn my back on them when they are in need. But until or if that day comes I will be a fan and support the team and the community that is involved in it. This was one of the best things to happen to Springdale and to me. Therefore it is something that will be important to me and something that I will do everything I can to help.
I learned a lot in the year that I was at the baseball team. Knowledge that you can't gain anywhere else at any other time because no one else will be able to recreate the exact conditions we were dealing with. We were a brand new thing in a town who had never seen a professional sport before (minus professional bull riding, we are in the south). We had to show people what this new thing was and the possibilities that partnering up with could mean for them. We had to sell this new idea to a new audience. I learned more about how you can go from a smaller company operating out of a small office making do with whatever you can and transition that into a full fledged baseball operation that was operating out of a multimillion dollar stadium. We went from mailing out all of our own merchandise by filling out countless Fed-Ex slips to having people who could do that for us. We went from maybe 20 people in the office to a staff of almost 300 (and that didn't include the concession stands). And the whole time I was there, working closely with the managers, learning and experiencing new things.
If it weren't for the sales techniques, the operating techniques, the managing techniques that I learned over the course of that year I wouldn't sit here today and know that I could one day start my own production company (or any company for that matter). I have learned some of the little things that will make or break a new company. I don't know it all and I never will but the experiences that I had at that ballpark are, what I believe, have prepared me for my new career path. Sure I need to learn new things about the film/TV industry, specifics that you can't learn anywhere else but I know that no matter what I face I will succeed because that is what I have done in the past. I knew nothing about operating a baseball park and I learned that, surely I can learn whatever I need to learn somewhere else.
I will miss working at the ballpark and will more than likely work at one when I retire just for the fun of it but for right now I have my home away from home (when I'm not working) and I know that my extended family is there with open arms welcoming me back again.
