Friday, May 01, 2015

Review: Live from Mongolia: From Wall Street Banker to Mongolian News Anchor

As I started reading Live from Mongolia: From Wall Street Banker to Mongolian News Anchor by Patricia Sexton, my first thought was: this book shouldn't have been written. The book chronicle's Sexton as she pursues her dream of being a news anchor, which takes her to of all places, Mongolia.

What's keeping you from pursuing your dream? Money, probably. Or maybe a family that can't be picked up an moved. Or maybe it's the lack of an opportunity. Maybe your current situation is just Good Enough that you can't justify tossing it all for some crazy dream. These would all be reasonable excuses. Thing is, Sexton has none of them. She's in a high powered job earning plenty of money, a job she hates, and she doesn't have the husband and children to slow her down. So this book shouldn't have happened. She should have gone off and had her adventure and that should have been that.

But as Sexton shows, pursuing that dream is just never easy! She does battle with everything from her inner doubting daemons to food poisoning and crazy bosses. She shows us that if you're going to tackle you're dream, you might as well forget about the excuses and Just Do It! If you're on the fence with your dream, or you just like a good travelogue (one that shows that no trip is ever perfect), then Sexton's book is a winner.

Incidentally, while I respect Sexton's choice to toss it and go for it, I'm personally more of a start-now-scale-later kind of guy. If I wanted to be an anchor, I'd start doing so with my own channel on YouTube. From there, I'd continue to hone my skills, striving to get closer and closer to that dream of say, anchoring the NBC Nightly News. While not as exciting as Sexton's approach, this method does allow you to operate within whatever restrictions you currently have (family, job, lack of money, etc.). For me, it's all about living your best life. But hey, her method worked for her and certainly made for an entertaining read!

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