The Dream Chaser. Gaskins Tony A.

together and paint a picture with them. Once, one of my teachers told me that my grammar could use a lot of work but that he couldn't give me less than a B just because of my writing style. Honestly, the only book I read was the Holy Bible growing up. There is a certain writing style in the Bible, and I believe growing up I emulated that style.

      Not only was I writing a lot, but also I was teaching and advising. I remember in middle school I would walk to my friends' homes, and I would be teaching them about the Bible on the way home. I would teach them about life, sins, and forgiveness. I was a child. I was a baby. I didn't really know nearly as much as I pretended to know. Then in high school I started doing relationship coaching. I didn't call it that back then, but that's what it's called today, and it's become a substantial stream of income for me. I remember being on three-way calls with these two girls, and they would ask me questions about their boyfriends. I'd tell them why he was behaving the way he was and what they should do in response. Then they would call back with the results, and they would always say, “I did exactly what you said I should do and you were so right!” I never got tired of hearing that. I was operating in my gifts. One of the two girls ended up leaving her boyfriend, and she became my girlfriend. So I'd used my life-coaching gift to get her out of that relationship, then I used my writing gift to win her heart. I say all that because the gifts were evident even as a child, but I had no idea that one day I would earn a living using them.

      You see writing and life coaching were gifts, but they were not options on my birth path. So I operated in them, but I didn't know that they could become a career. Had I known those were gifts that I could make a living from, I would have taken them much more seriously and honed them better. While those gifts were there, I was following my birth path and following one of the three options I had. The option I chose first was to be a professional athlete like Tracy McGrady. At that time Tracy McGrady was the only pro athlete I knew personally. I'm from Auburndale, Florida, and we had a population of 5,000 then. Tracy was the one guy who made it out and was making millions in the NBA. I wanted to be the next Tracy McGrady. That was one of the options on my birth path, but it wasn't the one for me. Tracy is 6′8″; I'm 5′10″. I make a much better writer, speaker, and life coach than I do a basketball player. I didn't think about that at the time though. I also played football. I excelled in basketball and football, so they seemed like natural gifts. I could have gone to the pros in either one of them had I put in the work, but again those goals were beyond what we could see in my household. I just wanted to graduate from high school, hopefully get into college, and stay out of prison or the grave. Becoming a pro athlete wasn't really taken seriously by anyone around me. I talked about it, but I didn't really work for it. I was good, so people thought that's what I would become if luck struck at the right time. But no one invested in me. No one took me to five-star camps or put me in a travel league or a real AAU program. I played one year of AAU, and that was with the Boys and Girls Club team. We weren't serious about it nor did anyone take us seriously. We were just going with the flow and hoping that we would get lucky. No one expected to make it out unless they were unusually gifted or uniquely built.

      Then my senior year rolled around and that was a big year for me. I had to earn a college scholarship in basketball or football. I didn't know much about academic scholarships, and I didn't think I was smart enough for one of those anyway. I knew my parents couldn't afford to pay for college. They were struggling to pay the high school tuition, and it wasn't very much because I qualified for financial aid; and I had some supporters at the school who really liked me and helped me a lot.

      Football came around first, and in the second game I popped something in my leg. I didn't know what exactly happened, but I heard a pop in my leg. It was treated as a high ankle sprain. The next week I tried to play but ended up with two carries and −3 yards due to my ankle. The next week I got a little better but still couldn't play. Then I had to sit out one more week. I missed three games that season, and we only played nine. I played the first game and the last five. I finished with over 1,300 yards in those six games, so I still averaged over 200 yards a game. I think a miscount happened though, because by my count, I had about 1,100 yards – but I went with what the newspaper said I had. Because of that ankle sprain I didn't have the showing I wanted to have, but I still received a lot of letters. The really big schools offered to let me join the team as a preferred walk-on. They just couldn't believe the numbers I put up, so they wanted to see it for themselves. I couldn't blame them. There were running backs that I was better than who went to big schools, so I knew I could cut it if it came down to it. But I was getting ready for basketball, and I wanted to make one last campaign just to see if I could get a scholarship in basketball. However, my dad and my coach got into a disagreement, because my dad wanted me to take two weeks off from sports and my basketball coach wanted me to come right into basketball. My dad told the coach that if he didn't give me two weeks off, then he wouldn't let me play at all. The coach said, “OK, then I guess he won't be playing then.” My dad told me what happened, and I sided with my dad. My coach came and told me that it wasn't personal and that he had no problem with me and that he just wanted me at practice. For some reason I wasn't as excited about basketball anymore when I realized my coach wouldn't let me take a two-week break. I decided not to play, and I was banking on football 100 % then.

      The end of the year came, and schools started to come around. My football coach was telling schools that they needed a full scholarship to get me. He was asking for a bit much considering that we played at a small 1A school against virtual nobodies. But, I took the vote of confidence in stride. I realized that the full scholarships weren't coming in, so I started to market myself. I didn't notice then what was another gift of mine – to be a go-getter. I'll talk later about how I got myself on TV. But I looked up all the Florida colleges and I went to their websites and submitted my info on their football pages. Florida Atlantic University called me back first. They invited me to come down and look at the campus. I went down with my parents, and it looked nice. I wanted to play there. The coach asked me if I would come play, and I told him yes. Then when I got back home about a week later, I got a call from a smaller school, West Virginia Wesleyan College. It was a D2 school and somehow the coach had come up with a way to pay my full $28,000/year tuition. Florida Atlantic was only going to be $11,000/year. So I felt flattered that a school was offering me almost triple. We spoke to my AAU basketball coach because he was the only person we knew who went to college on a scholarship. He told us to follow the money, not the opportunity. He said that I could get hurt in training camp and then I would be stuck paying for college at Florida Atlantic, but at the other school even if I got hurt, my school was paid for. So we took that advice, and my mom's friend who coached at Florida State University told her the same thing. He said if you were good enough, the NFL would find you even if you were playing pick-up ball in the middle of the woods. So I packed my bags and I moved to West Virginia. It was one thousand miles away from home.

      I was going away and taking all of my gifts with me. My gifts opened doors for me, and they made a way for me to get into college. I believe we all have gifts that can open doors for us, but we have to be willing to use our gifts and then walk through the doors that they open. We don't take ourselves seriously enough most of the time. We sleep on our dreams and we curse our gifts. I was stepping out on faith and taking a chance.

      You see, someone else confirmed all of my gifts. We can feel good at something, but if a single soul doesn't believe in us, we won't have a chance. Sometimes we pursue passions instead of gifts. A passion can be different from a gift. My passion was basketball, but I wasn't good enough to get a scholarship in basketball. My gift was football, and I got a scholarship in that. I had to use my gift as a means to a better end. My passion for basketball could have become more of a gift if I had more resources and support in that area, but I didn't, so I had to take what I could get. Every school had a hundred spots on a football team, but a basketball team had only 15. So it was easier for me to make it to college in football. Sometimes we have to walk in our gifts until we can pursue our passions. There are a lot of people pursuing passions but getting nowhere while letting their natural gifts rot.

      You may be good in graphic design and website building but not passionate about it, but yet you're passionate about music but not as good in it. Well, if you use graphic design to make money, then you can fund your passion for music. But if you ignore graphic design and just chase your passion for music, you may never get ahead in music because you don't have the resources you need to get really good at it. So take what