Off to Kansas

Entering Kansas on September 21, 2021 on #EyesUpRide

On Sunday, I depart the east coast for Kansas, where I will spend the next two weeks speaking to high school students around the state. In January, the opportunity to be the keynote speaker for the Kansas State High School Activities Association (KSHSAA) regional conferences came to my attention. I had connected with the director of KSHSAA following a presentation I gave in Boston, where I gave Kansas a lot of love because it was my favorite state to ride through. When we first spoke of this opportunity, I was all in on public speaking and this seemed like a great way to launch.

It’s now been eight months since then and my full-time pursuit of speaking is in the rearview mirror, and yet I find myself on the doorstep of an exciting opportunity to travel back to the state that made a big impression on me as I biked across two years ago. I had no idea this would actually happen and I feel surprisingly great about it.

When the director picked up the phone nearly at the end of business hours, I was somewhat shocked. Shortly into the conversation I asked if he was still looking for a speaker.

Back in July, I had nearly concluded that the trail to speak in Kansas had gone cold. I had only sporadic communications with the director since January with lukewarm responses that left me feeling less than confident but I hadn’t yet received a clear and firm “no”. One afternoon, I was doing work outside a coffee shop in Portland, Oregon and I decided to call the director of KSHSAA, totally out of the blue. I was expecting to either leave a voicemail or to hear that they had found someone to fill the role long ago and had forgotten to let me know. There was 1% of me that thought it might actually work out as it stands now. My expectations hadn’t gone to zero simply because I had never heard “no” or seen evidence that the position was filled.

When the director picked up the phone nearly at the end of business hours, I was somewhat shocked. Shortly into the conversation I asked if he was still looking for a speaker. To my additional surprise, they previously had two speakers lined up who both fell through and, in that moment, he decided to take a chance on me and my novice level of speaking experience because of this call.

So, nearly two months later, here I am preparing a presentation to be delivered to thousands of Kansas high school students by month-end and find that I am enjoying the process much more than when I last spoke in April. By that point, standing in front of audiences to deliver stories I had already told dozens of times felt more like a chore than a source of joy. Now, my career is not resting on my performance in Kansas, so I can relax a bit and actually have fun while hopefully making a difference. It’s quite interesting how a shift in circumstances and context can dramatically change our attitude toward something.

I don’t think I am unique in my distaste for chasing people and relentlessly following up on emails; it’s exhausting and hardly fulfilling. That being said, I am grateful I followed up with this lead regularly for most of the year and for the opportunity I have because of it. I have no idea if it will lead to anything else down the road, but I do know I will gain some great experience speaking to students and have the chance to make our roads a little bit safer through my stories and the #EyesUp message.

Since my decision to pivot away from public speaking as my career path, I have felt a bit lost. I am fortunate and grateful for my experiences in the past few years, all of which, I believe, make me a strong candidate for numerous career paths. With so many possibilities, I feel as though I am on the edge of a cliff looking into an expanse with no pull in one particular direction. I know that the next chapter will begin by taking one step in any direction and that feels intimidating at this point. For now, I am glad to have this project to work on as I continue to percolate on what will come next and approach each day with an open mind.

Thank you for reading! Have a great couple of weeks.

-Ben Grannis
#EyesUp