ThirtyTwo and Rising

Its so easy for people to get on social media and try to convince everyone that they have the perfect marriage. If you think a perfect marriage is a real thing you are sadly mistaken. I know there are times my wife wants to punch me in the throat and there are times that I would gladly return the favor!  Sometime we irritate each other like we’ve been married for 20 years but we ALWAYS love each other like we’ve been married for 60.  We try to make each other better people. We don’t try to change each other but we love each other for who we are. Find someone who emphasizes your best traits and works with your shortcomings. Lord know I often fall short, but she loves me anyway. I always hear people say their spouse is their best friend. Well my wif and I have LITERALLY caught fish together, drank beer together, killed deer together, laughed together, cried together, sat around a fire together, but most importantly prayed together, made a child together and are raising that child together in a loving home that knows God. I wouldn’t trade that for any b.s. storybook life. A perfect marriage cannot exist because there are no perfect people but we are two imperfect people who are perfectly in love. We kinda kick ass at marriage and I know that because the days that we want to throat punch each other are few than the days that we dont.  Happy Valentine’s day beautiful, I love you more than I love cake! 

​Someone once told me “If you think you have a lot of friends wait until your world comes crashing down. When the dust settles see who is still standing behind you.” That statement is very true and I have come to know that I am very fortunate when it comes to friendships. Some friendships come and go. Sometimes they don’t last because you never had that deep connection. Sometimes the relationship did not have sufficient time to grow. We tend to get busy living life and gravitating towards our established friends and new friendship aren’t given ample time to develop. Other friendships are meant to last a life time. I feel very blessed to have the amount and caliber of friends that I have. I remember when I was fresh out of high school and my parents separated, they decided to sell our house. My friends showed up every evening for a week with pizza, boxes and packing tape. They helped me and my mom pack up everything we had ever know. They laughed with us and cried with us. They helped us get ready for a garage sale. When it was all over my mom made the decision to move to Arizona with her sister to get a fresh start. My friends were right there with to say goodbye. Along with some family members that I always considered friends, my friends opened up there homes to me until I was able to get a plan together and get my life in order. Fast forward a few years and I found myself in my grandmother’s hospital room holding her hand as she left this world behind for a better one. To no one’s surprise my friends were in the waiting room ready to comfort me. They were there again when my Dad left this world, then my aunt, then my grandfather and then my mom. I have realized that when my world comes crashing down and the dust settles I don’t have to turn around to see who is standing behind me, because they are all standing beside me. It’s not just the sad times that we share but the good times as well. We have stood beside one another on our wedding days. We have rushed to the hospital to welcome each other’s children into the world. We have celebrated each others victories and triumphs. I am often asked how I found friends like that and the answer is simple. You have to be a friend like that. It’s not as easy as some people think. Today, most friendships seem to last longer than most marriages. Friendship is a commitment. It takes patience, understanding and love. It also takes a spouse that understands that if anything ever happens to them, your friends will be the ones that pick you back up. So your spouse must help you foster and maintain these friendships and you must do the same in return.  Just like a marriage you will get tired of each other. You will get under each other’s skin and want to physically attack each other. Your friends will annoy you and push your buttons and piss you off. You have to understand that sometimes you are also an irritating, annoying, needy and frustrating human being yourself. You have to be patient with each other and learn to forgive each other and look past your faults. I feel bad for anyone that doesn’t have the type of friends that I have. Learn to be a great friend, learn to maintain great friendships because if your world ever comes crashing down you don’t want to look up and see no one there to pull you back up. 

​It has occurred to me that when I give the advice “just work harder and you’ll go places” I am being somewhat misleading. Let me explain. First, I realize that I’m not exactly the image of success in many ways. My life has had ups and downs and I am thankful for that because I have learned how to get from “down” to “up”. Mostly through hard work. So why then is my advice misleading?  Because too many people have a false sense of what hard work means. Flipping burgers is, in its own right, hardwork but everyone else flipping burgers is doing the same work. What sets you apart? Do you show up early and stay late? Do you volunteer to do the crap tasks? “Working hard” means working hard enough to force people to take note!

I often hear people say that it’s not how hard you work or what you know, it’s who you know and working hard won’t change that. To that I say, having a wide spread network of friends and acquaintances is important and can lead to great opportunities if you know when and how to capitalize on them. I had a man tell me once “never pass up an opportunity to meet someone new. You never know who that person might be or who they know”. People may get a job because they know the right person but they may have worked hard to make that connection and probably have to work twice as hard to prove they deserve that position. I don’t advocate using people. What I mean is, be a people person. Be genuine about it, not insincere like you are looking at a human as a stepping stone. Be friendly, be likeable and know how to use that to your advantage. “Hard work” means politicing. Get out of your comfort zone and network. If you surround yourself with unmotivated folks content with mediocrity guess where you’ll end up. Surround yourself with the dreamers and the doers and people that see greatness in you even when you don’t see it in yourself. Work hard…. it’s easy to get lost in the shallow meaning of words but you have to look deeper.

Mowing grass is hard work (it put food on my table for many years) so you could mow grass for 20 years and say “Hard work never got me anywhere.” Again I say, stand out, be an asset. If you are stuck at a job in an industry that you don’t wish to have a career in then now is a good time to develop those networking skills. I’m certainly not content with where I am in life but I am nowhere near ashamed of it and I got here by “working hard” and to me that means, working harder than the next person, standing out, knowing what is expected of me and exceeding that daily, making new friends and business connections, and busting my back everyday like there is someone else working twice as hard to take away what I have worked for. Somewhere along the way we have lost the true definition of “hard work”. Don’t walk a picket line and demand more, show the world you deserve it because you are willing to earn it……….with “hard work”!

​We’ve probably all heard the saying “dont let your past define you” that saying is b.s. Its YOUR past, own it and learn from it. I truly believe that every little detail in life leads us to where we are at the present. I know there are many people who have had it way worse than me but there are many more who have no idea what kind of dark lonely places i have seen in my life. If the miles of tough roads that I’ve drug myself through is what led me to this cute little house with my beautiful wife and these two beautiful kids in it then I owe many thanks to my past.  It makes us who we are and if you are proud of who you are today then it was worth it. The greatest personalities are forged in the fires of adversity. Don’t be ashamed of your hard times but instead wear it like a badge of honor. There are few things in life that no one can take from you. Your past is one of those things. More specifically, living through the hard times and beating them. Seeing the unmentionable, experiencing the unthinkable and being able to stand up and say “I won! I didn’t let it break me!” No one can rob you of that. There was a time I lived in a storage building with no running water. It was a low point in life for sure. I never once asked “why me?” I never let it get me down. Instead i leaned on my faith and the only thing my dad left me, a ridiculous work ethic. I worked three jobs until I got myself out of that situatiom. I got MY life back where I wanted it to be because I worked for it.  It is one of the things I’m most proud of and I never have to give that up and no one else can take it from me. So kudos to your past, it may very well be what defines you after all. 

Two years ago I suffered a loss that came too soon and without warning.  At the age of just 52 my wonderful mother passed on. It was very sudden and a shock to all of us. My father had already passed 8 years prior to that. His passing was also sudden as he was only 48. That’s another blog for another day. In the days that followed my mother’s death my brother and I, with the help of our wives, my mom’s siblings and my grandmother, made the arrangements for her services. I remember being so busy during that time that I didn’t have much time to process what had actually happened. The night before her funeral I remember wishing that tomorrow would not have to come. It wasn’t because I didn’t want to live anymore, I didn’t want to die. I just didn’t want to have to deal with the emotions and grief that would come with the following day. With any death there are always a few days that elapse between someone’s passing and their funeral services but for whatever reason it seems to be the funeral that causes the onset of the realism. It’s the day that makes the passing seem so final. Like anyone in my position I was dreading it. I remember laying in bed thinking that if I didn’t go to sleep, tomorrow wouldn’t come. At somepoint in the early morning my body gave way to the exhaustion brought on by the events of that week and I drifted off to sleep. I remember waking up the next morning to the sound of my 3 month old son crying through the baby monitor. An exhausting sound no doubt but a sign that he was home and safe. I rolled over to see that my 3 year old daughter had climbed into bed with my wife and me at somepoint in the night like she does on occasion.  Lastly, I saw my beautiful wife laying there. She hadn’t left my side since we got the news of my mom. In that moment I knew that I would be ok, that we would all be ok. That day came and went like I knew it would. It was hard, painful and long. The next day came just like the day before. That’s when I  came to the realization that this day couldn’t have came without the previous day. This was a day of healing. A day of learning to live this life without my mother. It was that realization and those emotions that inspired me to make the following quote. “The world doesn’t stop spinning just because your heart is full of sadness. Not because it is unsympathetic but because the most compassionate thing it can do is dawn a new day”.  I miss my mom every day but I’m still thankful for every day that I get. I’m thankful that the sun came up the day of her funeral and every day thereafter.  Each day brings new healing and something to be thankful for.  Don’t take your loved ones for granted. In the wake of heartbreak don’t take a new day for granted.

​First I would like to welcome you all to my blog. I appreciate you taking the time to read what I have to say and I hope that you gain something from it. This blog will be mostly life advice, a lot of it in the form of my life experiences and how I handled them and what the results were. If you’re wondering why you should take advice from a 32 year old all I can say is read and find out. Through this blog I hope to take my readers on a journey of my life and the ups and downs that I have experienced and find some way to make it relatable. My hope is that my readers will be inspired by my story and my experiences and can learn from the things I’ve done right but more importantly from the things that I have done wrong. I hope that in times of adversity people will find peace and strength the way that I have in times. I’ve not always made the best decisions and I’m far from the image of success but when I look at where I have been and the experiences I have had I am amazed every day at where I have ended up. I have risen above many obstacles in my 32 years and I try every day to continue my rise. (Now you get the title?) I owe a lot of that to the people that gave me guidance when I needed it the most. My biggest hope is that I can repay that through this blog by helping other people who may be going through similar life experiences with little guidance. I will always be open to feedback and topic suggestions. I hope my words reach as many people as possible but not at the expense of being able to connect with each of you individually. I hope that I’m always able to answer questions for all of my readers. I hope you enjoy it.

Blog coming soon