I’m a pretty regular reader of my cousin’s blog, Tipsyfox. I was reading his nightly entry and got a bit of a surprise. He was talking about Jamie Thomas. I didn’t know that he knew who that was, and I find out now that he used to ride bikes with him. Here’s what I know of Jamie. He is a professional skater, who has his own spot on Tony Hawk’s popular video games. He went pro back in my middle school days. My friends from down the street, Marty and Daryl, used to skate with him. According to many witnesses, they were better than he was. Anyway when he went pro he would come back and bestow free shit to all of his skater friends. His girlfriend was pretty damn hot too. However, by all accounts, he was a collosal dick. I never met him. But many of my friends said that fame went to his head and he was most uncool. Yeah it’s second hand, but it’s interesting.
One year ago, I was freezing my balls off in Erie PA, shoveling snow every day, and trying to cheer up my perpetually miserable wife. This was just about the time last year we decided to say “Fuck this” and head back to Athens. Not too many people understood our decision. It had all the appearance of an emotional decision based on an intense desire to not be in Erie. But I knew that it wasn’t the case. We liked Erie the city. It was Erie the life that wasn’t working. We were far away from our families, and were stagnating in jobs we hated. We both knew what we wanted….to be close enough to our families to visit but not close enough for them to be all up in our shit (Hi Mom!), we wanted to live in Athens, a place we’d lived for many years and missed terribly, and we both knew exactly what kind of work made us happy. Armed with those desires, and Meghan’s parents money, one year later, here we are. Somehow we managed to get exactly what we wished for….well, I say ‘somehow’ but I know exactly how we did it. It was not an accident. We made our wishes become reality. I barraged every IT company in Athens (all one of them) with my resume and called repeatedly. I wouldn’t take no for an answer. And here I am, one of the top billers in the company. Meghan wanted to teach special ed, in a rural school, and that’s what she’s doing now. We wanted to move out of our tiny apartment into a big house, and we made that happen too. By this time next year, we’ll be completely out of debt, with cash saved, and I’ll be on my way to buying my first investment property with the help of my friend Todd Burton. I’m pretty fucking excited. The reason I’m so excited is that I look back to what Meghan and I accomplished in just one year. It’s amazing what you can do if you just plan it out and execute the plan. You can overcome any setback.
My point here, is that you can dig yourself into a pretty deep hole in life, but it doesn’t take much time to dig out. You just have to be able to change the parts of yourself that are holding you back from succeeding at whatever you want to succeed at.
My cousin is going to be going through some difficult times soon. He’s going to have to remove himself from his comfortable social scene. He has a crew of people that he’s been hanging with for many years. Unfortunately, being around them causes his worst traits to manifest themselves. It causes him to slack off, to drink and party excessively. Peer pressure can be a bitch. And I’m not talking about his friends gathered around saying “Chug Chug!”. It’s a more subtle pressure that is exerted by the power of many people’s social routines coming together. Everyone goes out drinking, and you go too. He has realized that there is no way to comfortably remain in that situation while you are trying to be different. It will make a mockery of your desire to change and you will lose faith in yourself. You’ll slip back into the old routines and nothing will change. So good for him for making the move. I had to do it too, but I didn’t want to, or even realize that’s what was happening. I moved to Erie and basically had no friends. I hung out with Meghan the whole time and eventually my desire to go out and get fucked up lessened. I thought when I moved back to Athens it would return with a vengeance, but it didn’t. It helped that I was so damn busy with work and that all my favorite bars were closed, but I think that even if that wasn’t the case, I would have stayed away. I have new healthier routines now, that are leading my to financial and social stability and security, and I just prefer that.
Enough rambling. My battery is dying. Time to play Gauntlet on my gamecube.