For most of my life, I wanted to be in entertainment. I didn’t know exactly what that meant, but I figured if I was writing, filming, or performing I must have been barking up the right tree. My career in the entertainment industry never really became hot, but it became a career, nevertheless. I hosted Hulu’s first original program and worked with NFL players and gamers on a number of original Twitch programs. I voiced a few commercials, wrote a few branded content segments, and had it all culminate in producing what one could call celebrity content, promoting celebrity’s movie or TV shows at film festivals and the like.
These highlights gave me some great memories. Filming at Sundance was one of the most enjoyable productions—albeit small—I’ve been a part of. Being on the front lines of the eSports industry introduced me to an entirely different medium of creativity and art. Creating live videos for Facebook allowed me to build a passionate team, which occurred in the middle of the internet industry’s “pivot to video” or their attempt to recreate The Wild West.
Over my decade or so as a content creator “in entertainment”, millions of people watched stuff that I had produced and usually hosted, but eventually it didn’t feel like entertainment. When you make content that you eventually don’t have a connection towards or that inevitably lacks a North Star (or that Star burns out), it can all begin to feel like a job and not a passion. You start to feel the difference between a view and a viewer, content and a story. Entertainment didn’t feel like a goal as much as it felt like an industry. An industry meant to satisfy stakeholders more than audiences, an industry not always sure of itself, but sure enough to keep going.
These realizations weren’t initially clear—they were preceded by anxiety and spouts of panic, my mind was telling my body something was wrong, but my body had no data to show otherwise. For the first time in my life, the things I felt like I always wanted to do didn’t feel like it was what I was meant to do, and my check engine light kept going off.
But then came aviation.
Beyond flying me to a few film festivals and to sets on-location, aviation had never played a role in my life. My father had about 100 hours. My grandfather maybe 10,000 hours more than that, which did give me an interest and a knowledge of aviation, but that was less PPL and probably more preternatural. I had an odd passion and interest for airplanes. I could tell you the difference and major traits between most any commercial airplane, while simultaneously being afraid to fly in them (my mother had 0 hours).
But then came ICON Aircraft.
ICON is an aerospace company known for one product: the ICON A5. My initial time with ICON was somewhat unique, in that I had the chance to promote the A5 only a few months after I had been promoting celebrities. It made for an interesting juxtaposition. The aura that we usually associate with celebrity figures was now surrounding a carbon fiber airplane with a 100hp engine. A folding wing system felt tantamount to an action star flexing their biceps on the big screen.
I quickly realized that of the dozens of interviews I had ever done, the A5 would be up there as one of the bigger celebrities. For one, you can not only approach it, but own what is essentially a piece of the future—the closest thing mankind has to a flying car, with the next-gen safety characteristics to accelerate turning potential flyers into safe pilots. The A5 isn’t as much an airplane as it is a spoiler alert as to what humans will create, and what’s possible when we take fun seriously.
I didn’t exactly know what this meant when I went for my first flight. I knew I was afraid of flying, but I had also never flown in a small airplane that was anything like this before, so perhaps the two would cancel out. My forty-minute flight had me starting to get airsick, which was unusual, as I only get seasick. But I also had never: stalled in an airplane, done a min-radius turn, flown feet above the open sea, recovered from a stall in an airplane, or pulled 2Gs in an aircraft.
…So there’s a first time for everything.
For the record, my motion sickness didn’t cause me to vomit. And now with probably 40+ hours in an A5, I have rarely experienced any motion sickness since that initial flight. What I have experienced is a new perspective on what content is for and what it can do. General Aviation is largely an industry about control, giving people in the general public the chance to save time and/or have more privacy over how they travel, be it through their business or personal lives. ICON is an extension of that, but with a greater emphasis on enjoying that control—not really saving you time but to create a new experience that the ground simply can’t offer. Telling that story and the innumerable ways it can manifest itself is mainly what I do. There is no other goal than to remind people the sensation of flight can give us, or to make them aware of the incredible room general aviation still has to grow, especially if one were to follow ICON’s heading. It’s still a job that ebbs and flows, like any occupation at most any company, but it is a job with a consistent and definable mission—to promote the safety and freedom of adventure.
Perhaps entertainment just wasn’t for me at the time or vice versa, but I became lost in the Industry because I couldn’t find the chance to make an impact. Aviation is different. It is an industry that you get into because you want it to impact you. Respect it. Learn how to patrol it. And it will reward you with an experience felt by thousands of others, but that will still feel as if it’s meant for you.
For those interested in aviation or have chosen to make it their career path, hopefully some of the above resonates. For those whose experience far exceeds mine, I’m sure it has its challenges beyond what I’ve mentioned. Like what I felt in entertainment, I’m sure some sensations may get old. But based on my experience, the feeling of being in aviation is proprietary. I’m not even a pilot but I believe I understand the sky. I’m thankful for the chance it has given me to find a new direction and to introduce me to an entirely different world of people. Being in the air and having the chance to even be small part in bringing others closer to the airspace, makes whatever happen on the ground feel a bit more ordinary. And while finding what we’re meant to do may feel like a moving target in life, doing something that feels extraordinary more often than not means I’m on a path likely worth following.
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