Everyone has their different demons that they have to face. Mine always seem to come back to haunt me at the worse points in time. I managed to fail my entire first semester of college back in 09, and managed to almost get myself killed, but in the process, I got a new set of eyes that have brought me back to being who I am.
I lost sight of my goals and everything that I stood for my first year of college. That was my first taste of real freedom that I never really had, and I abused it more than I should have. I was skipping classes, doing things that I should not have been doing and I paid the price and took the consequences of losing everything that I have and having to start all over again.
The turnaround started last year when I started working for an IT Company at their service desk over the summer, filling in for people as they took vacation. I had done this the past summer but I really wasn’t expecting it this time. I took the job and I did it well. Right around August someone on the team quit and they offered me the position and I took it without a second thought. After I started working full time for them, I signed up for classes and paid for them myself and finished out my first semester with straight B’s. I had completely turned myself around 180 degrees. I have learned that nothing that I do is free and that I have to work as hard as I humanly can to get anywhere in my life.
At the same time that all of this was going on, my best friend decided to take a different turn from me. She took the freedom that she had gained by dating someone who was 25 and moved across the country to be with him, away from rules and parents and away from what I thought were her dreams. She managed to get herself into school in January and by March she was already out of money and wasn’t able to pay for her next semester, but she was able to pay for a trip to Illinois (with her fiancée), 2 cats, a dog, an apartment, more than one car since she has been out there, and a trip to Vegas right around the same time. Money seems to burn a hole in their pockets and it is clear.
This morning, I woke up to a post on my facebook saying that she had just bought Tim McGraw tickets for June 17th. I am sorry… but there is more to life than trips to Vegas and seeing Tim McGraw live in concert. Instead of paying for that, she could have taken the money that they are spending on these trips and put it towards tuition, or something along those lines. She had watched me screw up every aspect of my life and was right there by my side to help me out, but when I try to help out or offer any advice, I am the asshole because it isn’t my life.
Now that this school year is coming to a close, and I think back to all the crazy things that I did before and kind of laugh at myself a bit… I really was out of my mind. Everything that I am doing now is pretty much where I want to be. I am working full time during the week, have classes almost every night, I manage to keep up with writing reviews for a website, I am saving up for a new car, and I even attempt to keep ahold of a social life (not very well though). We all need to learn to pick our battles better, and we will go farther in everything that we do.
I will never claim to be better than anyone, but I will say that I fight harder than most for what I want.
