My industry is kind of weird. Working in the entertainment business isn’t a regular 9-5 with 2 weeks of annual paid vacation. It’s very feast/famine and truthfully, most people don’t really understand it. When I start trying to explain the inner workings of my job, they begin to glaze over. 

Not Andy. Anytime I saw him, he always wanted to talk about it. What was new for my work personally, but also, what was new for my business. How had things changed? How were they evolving? When we sat down, it always felt like he had spent time doing “his homework” and came with things he wanted to learn more about. His questions were always inquisitive and insightful. That reminded me of two things I knew to be true of Andy. First, he was always interested in learning more and gaining more knowledge. Even though he was one of the brightest people I knew, there was a humility to his intelligence that never boasted. He was always curious. He seemed to love learning for the sake of understanding the world more.

The second thing it reminded me is that Andy cared about me. Because my life is so defined by my work, he wanted to know more about the trends that were shaping and impacting my life. Though it was never spoken, I always assumed that was because he wanted to ensure I had some sense of what the immediate future was for my industry so that I had some sort of plan ready to navigate whatever storms were up ahead. 

For instance, during the pandemic, the show I was staffed on was on a prolonged furlough. I’d already been without work for over a year and didn’t anticipate having work for another six to twelve months. Aware of that fact, Andy reached out to me with a job opportunity. He thought if I could write scripts, I could write articles about mobile payments and crypto, which were subjects I knew NOTHING about. When I tried to explain that to him, he assured me I’d be able to do the research and write the articles, offering himself as a resource if I needed to be brought up to speed on a subject. And so, to prove Andy’s faith in me wasn’t a mistake, I dove into the work. And to my surprise, I did a good enough job on the first article that another assignment followed. Then another. And to my bigger astonishment, I started to understand what I was writing about. 

All of that happened because Andy took the time to inquire about me, to think about what I needed and then to have the compassion to find a way to help me. Because that’s what a Christian does. And I love him for it.