The Best Thing I Ever Did (That Felt Like The Worst)
2016
I'm sitting in my bankruptcy attorneys office.
No pictures on the off white aged walls, no windows.
A prison cell.
And with the way my attorney is talking to me, I feel like I'm sitting in the principals office.
What a giant failure.
"Alright Mr. Spillyards, the process is all done, if any creditors contact you for collections tell them you're in
Chapter 7 bankruptcy and refer them to my email and I'll take care of it."
As I walk to my car, the emotions hit.
Part of me is relieved.
Over $70,000 in debts will no longer be looming over me.
But the other part?
A giant shame cloud rolling in.
After hustling a career as an actor and stuntman for the last 3 years in New Orleans, I've finally made it out to Los Angeles only to
file for bankruptcy 7 months later.
What the hell am I even doing?
I've been building my credit since I was 18 years old.
Never missed a payment, never been late, and now filed for bankruptcy.
That escalated quickly.
How have I ended up here?
The truth is I've been kicking around the idea of just ripping off the band aid and filing for the last year or more.
A business failure, floating life expenses and bills on credit cards, I've been drowning for a while.
And the water has only been getting deeper.
Until now, I just couldn't wrap my head around what it would mean if I did file:
My credit goes down the drain - all my hard work - gone.
No safety nets, cash only.
The ability to get a loan to buy a house is now nonexistent. For years.
I'm devastated. And now, truly on my own.
But it's either this, or go back to Arkansas with my tail tucked between my legs and beg for my old 9-5 back.
Creative death.
But over the last month or so I realized something.
I was never going back.
That it was okay for me to start over in Los Angeles, because I knew I was going to make it. No plan B
I rationalized that by the time I was ready to buy a house, if my credit wasn't where it needed to be based on the
bankruptcy haunting my credit report, I'd just pay cash.
Because thats how much I was going to succeed. I believed it.
Over the next few years I slowly (very slowly) climbed the ladder.
I busted my ass chasing down every opportunity available to me.
I worked at theme park stunt shows for 80 bucks a day after gas, commuting up to 4 hours a day because of LA traffic.
I did countless previz's for free, sometimes pulling all nighters editing or doing sound effects to meet deadlines that weren't
even mine (because I wasn't even actually on the team)
But I was paying my dues.
And eventually... it all paid off.
I got my first big break on a Christopher Nolan movie Tenet (which is crazy to think about really) and that snowballed into
non-stop work for the next 6 years.
Spider-Man, Hawkeye, Guardians 3..
It was like the universe (God in my case) finally decided maybe I had had enough.
Maybe it was time for Caleb to get some wins.
It wasn't until recently that this all came full circle.
It's 2024, and I'm sitting in a different office now.
Ironically it's similar. No art, no decor. Very sterile. Smells like funky old paper.
But this time the reason why I'm here is a little different.
I'm signing the closing documents on my brand new house in Atlanta.
And it's in this moment that I'm realizing that the bankruptcy - the thing I feared so much and that made me feel like I was the
scum of the Earth, was the absolute best career decision that I ever made.
It gave me time.
And over the last decade, having an 800 credit score would have meant absolutely nothing anyway.
Because I was hustling.
And I realize the thing that I thought was the worst thing ever, was actually the biggest opportunity of my life in disguise.
It's funny how life works.
The reality is, when we pursue something that lights us up, we can never really know what "bad things" are actually bad things.
It seems to me that more often than not, the door that closes, or the negative thing that happens tends to have a way of nudging
us into alignment with exactly where we need to be.
After a decade of perseverance and foolish belief in myself, I'm so glad that the Caleb of 2016 had the guts to double down
instead of throwing in the towel.
If I had a time machine, I'd pop into that tiny office to let him know that everything was gonna turn out just fine.
But somewhere deep down, I think I always knew that.
I hope this helps!
Caleb
