Learning the Hard Way

Learning the Hard Way

No one believed in me. That was their first mistake.

Higher education is a luxury to those who grow up poor. If you did not earn your own way, you did not go to college. The majority of us down the ‘holler’ considered higher education to be out of reach. I was one of the hopeless.

It was just easier to drop out in the 80s. It was common to get a full time job and just party or go fishing with friends. Jobs paid barely enough to get by, but pooled money bought the party favors.

I languished in that circle of self destruction for too many years. I got a good job working midnight shift at a local factory. I’d go fishing in the mornings, take a quick nap in the afternoon and play music until time to go to work. I was living the good life for a man just out of high school.

We had no thought toward the future, we all lived in the present. Mother Nature called us. Living in West Virginia, the lure of the woods and streams was too much to fight. I lost that fight.

The factory shut down in 1995 displacing too many workers for the job market to absorb. I took the summer off and collected unemployment. I strapped my fishing pole to my motorcycle and had a blast.

I decided to try college as a way out of actual work. I entered the recruiter’s office and he asked me what degree I wanted to shoot for? “Anything that requires no math,” I replied. We decided on computer graphics for a two year degree.

I had never owned a computer. I had never learned to type, and I still don’t do it correctly. I had never given a thought about computers, that was way too much technology for my Generation X mentality. Yet, my goal of an air conditioned office job outweighed my lack of desire to learn.

I failed to finish my two years. I had stayed solid through the first year and attended all my classes. In that time, I learned that I can still learn, and computers no longer scared me.

I bought a Brother Word Processor for assignments, and was given a 3/5” floppy disk that had been recycled from the last class in remedial English. Upon inserting that disk, my life began to change.

I was an average student in high school. Choir and football were more important that actually studying. I scraped by and graduated. Again, no thoughts of college.

The inherited disk retained the writings of previous students. After reading some of their pieces, I was confused bout how they had graduated high school. There efforts were so minimal. No sentence structures, no flow and a basic lack of general knowledge.

I stuck to my course of action and did not take any other English classes.

On a lark, I decided to enter the Freshman of the Year Essay contest. My graphics instructor laughed at me. “Nobody in the arts has ever won that,” he did not take me seriously.

He was not my first non believer, but a significant one.

Guess who won the contest?

i had to write an essay on how much a new computer would mean to me. They asked for 2,500 words, I gave them over 5,000.

Needless to say, the art department was thrilled.

After my failed college career, I started working at a convenience store, again, midnight shift. At the time I had hair all the way down my back and a full beard. I guess you could say my freak flag was flying.

The store would only put me on midnight shift. They made me shave the beard, but I could keep my hair as long as it was under a hat. The area supervisor would stop by in the mornings and we got to know each other well.

After a few months, my girlfriend convinced me to cut my hair. The loss of my pride and joy had an immediate affect on my marketability. The very next morning I was put into management training.

It was amazing to me that I was so much smarter without my hair. Who believes in a longhair?

After managing stores for several years, I then BS’d my way into a better job. You see, for a very brief time, I was a reporter for a local newspaper. In my interview, long hair beard and all, I was skeptically asked if I could be a reporter? “Who, what, where, when, why and how? I asked. I was given the job under preliminary basis. Had to show them they could believe in me.

Alas, as fate often does, I had to leave that job due to a break up that forced me to move back to my home town. I had learned many skills by that time, and had taken over the ‘job printing’ and graphics department.

I have always been a firm believer in “fake it until you make it.” That concept is generally not advisable. In most cases, someone who has BS’d their way in get caught quick.

I have managed to do it successfully throughout my adult life. It takes a lot of confidence, and the charismatic display of proper BS to convince an employer to hire you. That is what got me through the learning curves.

I have always been the underdog who thinks he’s the top.

Narcissism is a fine trait to have, as long as it is offset with enough self deprecating humor. I never walked into a job interview nervous. I walked in with confidence and personality, let everything fall where it may.

One of the fastest ways to learn is necessity. The job does not have time to coddle you while you ask 1,000 questions. Get the basics down and work up from there. Try to always be one step ahead of whoever is teaching you. Observe and absorb the actions of others around you.

I needed a change. I needed something new, or at least different. Managing retail stores was getting too time consuming and stressful. My other bad trait is after 6 or 7 years at any job, I would get bored and start thinking of doing something else. Consequently, that is one of the reasons I am perpetually in near dire financial straights. The urge to start over outweighed the lack of monetary encouragement.

I saw an ad in my local newspaper about a different paper needing a managing editor. My girlfriend at that point was thinking I lost my mind when I applied. She had only ever seen me in a blue collar light. I admit, that does seem a large jump, but one should never doubt me.

I got the job. I moved back to that small town to run the editorial department at the that same local newspaper. Yep, I was back. I confidently announced that I could do the job. They never saw how nervous I was, thinking this time I might be in over my head. it was time for the faking it part to kick in.

I was replacing the editor I had worked under before. This was great for me as we already had a good working relationship. Reality smacked me hard when I found out she only had a week to train me.

Again, I got the basics down and grew from there. It was difficult to get settled in to the atmosphere. I was the leader of a team of veterans in the field of journalism. I was not ready for that.

I learned mainly through their wisdom and my mistakes. Apparently I did something right, I spent 7 years there and wracked up 7 West Virginia Press Awards. I made lifelong friends and valuable connections.

It is amazing how many people were surprised I had achieved such a high position with no education. None of my friends understood the desire I had to overcome those who doubted me.

i loved the job at the paper. I loved the interaction. I loved that everyday brought something new to the table. I eventually left for better money.

Currently I work for a large hospital system answering calls. I work from home and I am one of the best. I was able to start writing again about 3 years ago after my mother had passed at my home from dementia. I was lucky to be able to care for her until she passed.

After she passed, I started writing a book. A book I had been writing for over 40 years in my mind. The words started flowing on to the page as my soul poured out. It is a book that mother need never have known about. I was a childhood abuse survivor.

As always, there are those who roll there eyes when I tell them about writing the book. It is the reaction of a non believer followed by “I’ll buy it”

I have now finished the first draft and am shopping for an editor. I am still financially destitute, making enough to pay mortgage and bills so the process is slow. I have started creating my website, bought my domain name and my ISBN numbers, and establishing a social media presence.

I see it as a good thing that no one believed me. I hope the keep their skepticism. Nothing is a stronger motivator than proving doubters wrong.

Please keep telling me I can’t.