Taking stock

I was reminded tonight of just how crazy things in my life have been. I graduated in 1997 and joined the Army; from there my life has been anything but normal. I was forced out of the Army due to a broken leg and had to readjust to civilian life. It was hard as I really didn’t like life as a civilian the military was a sure thing and out in the world people just seemed not to care. In the military I was part of a family, and we took care of our family. I had tons of friends to hangout with so I was never really bored.

I came back to Dublin and started a job to pay the bills; I had several surgeries along the way to get my leg back right. It was finally fixed, fuck you Dr. Chi for telling me I’d walk again but never run I proved your ass wrong. I decided to go back to college; it was slow going as I was working full time and taking a night class at a time.

The biggest help for me at the time was a great friend Melissa. She came along and got me motivated to give a damn about my college career again. I started dropping my hours at work to the bare minimum to support myself and take more classes. I finally transferred to Georgia Southern in 2001. While there they messed up on my financial aid and told me to take a personal loan to cover things till the cash came in. Well that cash never came and I went into the hole fast as the loan came due and I had nothing to pay it. I was forced to move back to Dublin in 2002, that was one of the worst years of my life. My Grandmother died in March, one of the few people in my family who really supported me instead of supporting a rivalry between me and my cousins that everyone brought up at every opportunity.  I was practically bankrupt at that time and was forced to drop college for the rest of the year. The worst blow came from me making one of the stupidest mistakes of my life; I gave up the love of my life Edee. She and I had been dating for nearly 3 years and it was time for us to take it to the next level, marriage, and we both got cold feet and decided to take a break. We never got back together in any meaningful way after this.

Well in 2003 I started back into college and taking a few classes while working full time. It was rough; I had to drive 40 minutes back and forth to where my classes were held. I was taking physics class at the time under a man who taught at MIT, I made an A but I had no life. I was so focused on getting things back on track that I never really tried to do much else.

Well in 2004 I moved back to Statesboro and to Georgia Southern, this time I wasn’t dependent on financial aid to cover my way. The first year was brutal; I was required to take 19 hours of upper level courses. These courses were difficult science courses, physics, calculus 3, some computer programming classes, and add in my engineering courses. I started class at 8 A.M. and got out of my labs around 3-5, depending on the day, then I went to work where I had to stay at the store till 11 P.M. then go home cook  do homework and do it all again.

I made it to being a Georgia Tech student in the GTREP completed one semester under that and dropped from engineering. The more classes I took the more I hated it and just never felt like it was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I had no clue what I wanted to do, I had spent all these years fighting tooth and nail to graduate as an engineer and that was now mute. With much thinking I settled on a History degree with physics Minor, this was due to McMullen and Briggs, two great professors.

During my time at Georgia Southern as an engineering student I met someone named Kristi Harnish. We don’t speak anymore, for whatever reason, but she introduced me to the game world of warcraft. Just another online computer game for many people, for me it turned out to be much more. I played the game, though rarely with her mostly with my other friend Matt. I met countless other people through the game who are now my friends. These friends I met through an online game due to someone I met before one of my computer programming classes helped me get a job out in Texas after graduating.

It is amazing what strange path our lives can take sometimes. How someone new to us can make such a major impact on our lives. Who would have thought that someone I met through an online game would have helped me get a great job? Who would have thought that someone I never knew until she was over at a mutual friend’s home because she had no place to live would have turned out to be the best influence on my life.