Confindence

People have always told me my whole life that I need to have confidence. Confidence in myself to go talk to that cute girl I have a crush on. Confidence in myself that I will do well in school, or in sports. Confidence in myself to finish my novel. Confidence in myself to just be me. Well, I’ll tell you why having confidence in myself after 27 years of life is so difficult for me.

My whole life I have been bullied, whether it be by classmates, friends, family, teammates and coaches, and even teachers and professors. Bullied by people who are supposed to tell you uplifting things so that you will succeed in life. People in your life that are supposed to instill confidence in you. Now, I’m not trying to get people to have pity on me. That’s not my reason at all. The reason is for people to understand why I am the way that I am.

I’ve had people in my life tell me, “Evan, you’re too fat to sit in that chair, you’ll break it.” “Evan, you’re too slow.” “Evan, you’re too dumb.” “Evan, you’ll never publish a book, let alone a best seller.” “Evan, you’re not good enough.” That’s the worst of them all, “Evan, you’re not good enough.” I would always ask myself why I was never good enough. So, I quit trying so hard. I barely graduated from high school. I barely graduated from junior college. I barely graduated from a four year university. Why you may ask? Because I didn’t have confidence in myself. I just figured the people in my life would see that I tried a failed and say, “Evan, you just weren’t good enough. You should have tried harder.” How was I supposed to have confidence to try harder and hope to succeed and exceed their expectations of them, when my whole life I’ve been told I’m not good enough?

My mom, dad and sister were the only ones who always pushed me to do better. They were the ones to tell me, “Evan, you can do well.” Although, it was hard for me to listen to them when the amount of people telling me that I can’t, were louder than my family telling me that I can. So, I figured I would seek some help from almost complete strangers to instill in me the confidence that I needed to succeed. I sought help from two professors at Central College. Brian Peterson and Sue Pagnac. These were the two people in my life that weren’t going to give up on me besides my mom and sister.

In my final semester at Central College, Brian and Sue took me under their wings. They both knew the struggle I was going through losing my father the year before. They knew that I struggled with alcohol abuse the year before. They knew the suicidal thoughts I had the year before. They knew I needed help and they didn’t give up on me, even though I didn’t make it easy for them at times.

I really bonded with Sue, because she could sympathize with me because like me, she lost her father a year or so before I lost mine. She was the person I could go to when I was struggling with losing my father. She would always tell me things like, “I’m always here if you need to talk about it or to talk about anything to keep your mind off of it.” Then she would tell me things like, “Think of all the good times you had with your dad and dwell on those. Think about the happy moments you had with him and hold on to those.” Sue saved my ass the last few weeks of my final semester at Central. I needed a 2.0 major GPA, and she helped me achieve that. She worked tireless with me on my Senior Seminar paper, which was 20 pages long. It was the most difficult college paper I would have ever had to write. It was actually the hardest paper I had to write in my entire life. I remember that when I started the paper the day it was assigned. I went to Sue and told her, “Sue, I have no clue where to start. I have to have so many resources to write this paper. I’ve never written anything like this.” You want to know what she told me? She told me, “Evan, gather as much information as you can on your topic. Read. Just write anything and everything that comes to mind of the topic and we’ll go from there.”

It was a very long 8 weeks. I forget the exact grade I needed to get on that Seminar paper, I know at least a C-. I remember when I finally finished all my drafts with Sue, she read through the whole thing with the guidelines that my professor wanted our papers to follow right next to my finished paper. Once she finished reading through it, she looked up at me from across her desk and said, “This is not C work, this is at the very least B work. You worked very hard on this, I don’t see you getting any other grade less than a B.” Well, once I got the graded final paper back, I had received a C. I took the graded paper to her and she was so disappointed. She wasn’t disappointed in me, she was disappointed that the professor for that class had graded my paper so harshly, but she was still happy that I got the grade I did, because it meant that I passed and I would graduate from Central College with my Bachelor’s degree in English.

Brian never gave up on me either. He knew how much of a hard time I had with losing my dad. My final year at Central I would have weekly or bi-weekly meetings with him to tel him how classes and everything were going. He would always point me in the right direction for different resources I could use to help me with my final year. He even arranged that I had 2 hours in the morning set aside in the test taking room at the Student Support Services office for studying. I tell you what, that final year at Central, I probably did more studying in that year than most students do in the whole four years of college. At least that’s how it felt. It’s been nearly two years since I graduated, and I remember waking up at 6 AM every morning to start studying, then I would go to class, go grab something to eat real quick, go to the library to study, then go to another class, go to my work study job and study there. Then I would grab a quick dinner, after dinner I would go to the library until it closed at midnight. Then I would finally go to my dorm room and continue to study until 2 or 3, sometimes 4 in the morning and repeat the process. Brian once told me he admired my hard work and determination but that I needed to get more than a couple hours of sleep at night, in order for the studying to pay off.

I just want to give Brian and Sue both my thanks for never giving up on me when it seemed like everyone else in my life had given up on me. I owe it all to them for getting me to graduation day with my degree in hand. That was the happiest day of my life. I want you both to know that you made such an impact in my life. This country needs more educators like you.

It’s Been Way Too Long

It has been a long time since the last time I made a blog post. A lot of things have been happening in my life since then. My last post was about 9 days before I graduated from Central College. I worked for the landscaping company I worked for the summer before my final year at Central. I got a job at Menard’s Distribution Center. Dealt with deep depression. Got a girlfriend. My girlfriend and I welcomed a beautiful baby girl into this world. How did it all happen? Well, here’s the story.

Most of the people that read my blog posts are mostly friends and family. But, for those readers that aren’t either; I actually did graduate from Central College with a Bachelor’s of Arts in English. Now let me tell you, there was a panic and anxiousness in me those last few days before graduation. It came down to small little mistakes I made writing my Senior Seminar final paper. If I had made any more minor mistakes, as far as spelling and grammar go, I would not have received that degree. Then I don’t know how my life would have turned out. To be completely honest, I probably wouldn’t be here right now. I’ll let you all ponder on that and you can come up with your own ideas as to why I wouldn’t be here.

Since graduation, I worked for the landscaping company I worked for the summer before graduating. With the company, I went from being told what to do, to my boss telling me I was in charge of one of our mowing crews. I asked her why she felt like giving me that responsibility, and mind you, it’s been awhile since this happened so I don’t remember the exact words, but she said something along the lines of, “I’m giving you this responsibility because I know that you will get lawns mowed on time. I also know that you will continue to work after your mowing route is finished by helping out the other crew with their route. You’re a hard worker and I wish I had everyone on my payroll that worked as hard as you do.” Now that felt pretty good. So, I took over as leading one of our mowing crews. I even trained one of our newer guys how to use our mowers and he picked up on it quickly. I have always tried to take pride in my job, no matter what the job was. I always tried to do the job right and fix it the best I could if I made a mistake. I stuck with the company from May of 2016 until things started slowing down in September of 2016. I had to look for work elsewhere.

September 20th of 2016 I started working part-time at Menard’s Distribution Center. The job they had me doing when I first started wasn’t the greatest because I was walking around and standing on concrete for 10 hours at a time, lifting and moving heavy stuff the whole time. I was making just as much money doing that in 2 weeks as I was mowing lawns, but I was working fewer hours because I was only working part-time. I thought to myself, I can’t imagine how much I would make working full-time. I struggled with depression from the time I started working there because I was only part-time and I was always doing the same thing, day after day; I thought to myself again, “This can’t be all my life is going consist of, there has to be more than working part-time and making such little money.” For a while, I contemplated suicide, because I didn’t see any other way out. Things in my life weren’t going the way that I was hoping they would. I would sometimes think, “What was the point of me going to college to just be working part-time at a dusty warehouse? I could have done that right out of high school and not have had all this student loan debt.” So, I decided I would get a second part-time job. I applied at Casey’s General Store the next day. They wanted to give me a job working in the kitchen, doing overnights from 11PM until 6AM on Friday’s, Saturday’s and Sunday’s. With my schedule at Menard’s, I couldn’t work those hours at Casey’s and work the 4PM to 2:30PM second shift schedule and not wear myself so thin that I would always be sick with a cold or flu. I had the interview at Casey’s one morning before having to go to work at Menard’s. The Manager that interviewed me wanted to hire me on the spot. I lied to her and said that things were starting to pick up at Menard’s and that my Manager there wanted to move me to full-time. I went in to work at Menard’s and spoke with my Manager right away and asked him if I could go full-time. He said, “Absolutely, let me get the paper work right now for you to sign and you’ll start the full-time schedule next week.” That was on a Thursday, the new work week at Menard’s was Sunday and I worked that Sunday. I have been working full-time for Menard’s for over a year now, and couldn’t be happier. I might even apply to be a supervisor within the next month.

Since working at Menard’s I found someone I love very much. Her name is Laura. I met her at work and I was super nervous to talk to her. I asked this girl I work with Lilly to talk to her for me and tell Laura that I kind of like her. The next day after that, Laura came up to me that she just got out of a bad relationship and that before that, she found out she was pregnant. She had a lot of other things going on in her life, like fixing up her house that she just bought the year before. She said she didn’t have a lot of money to hire people to do the work on the house, so she was having to get volunteers to help with the house. I offered my help to her because I knew a few things about fixing up houses, because my own family had to fix up our house due to a flood. One day I went in to work on my off day just to work a couple hours. I wrote my name and number with a little note on a little piece of paper and asked Lilly if she would give it to Laura for me because I wasn’t going to be at work the whole night to give it to Laura myself. So Lilly did, I didn’t hear anything from Laura except when I would see her in passing at work. Then one day at work, I was building pallets with our stock product for the stores we distribute to, when Laura sought me out and asked me if I wouldn’t mind helping at her house that weekend by striping paint off of trim boards she was salvaging from the house. I said, “Absolutely, do you need my number?” She said, “I still have that note that Lilly gave me from a week or so ago. I’ll text you some time tomorrow morning or afternoon so that I can give you my address and then you will have my number.” The rest is pretty much history from that day on. I will post another blog about more of the details of how Laura and I fell in love with each other. Since that day, she had a beautiful baby girl, Aria Faith. I love that little girl with all my heart. I love her like she was my own flesh and blood. When I see Aria, I don’t see some other mans daughter. I see my own daughter.

Life has certainly had its ups and downs. It’s been an amazing ride and I can’t wait to tell you all more about all the other big things that happened in between these big things that happened to me in my life. I thank God every day for the life He has given me. Until next time everyone. I hope you all enjoy the read.