Moving
Moving
Hearbreak
Moving
Moving again.
All of this within two years.
Im not kidding when I say I came close to giving up, and more than once I thought I had.
What happened?
Within hours of graduating my parents, partner Andrew, and I were packing the Pasadena apartment into a Penske truck to leave and the next morning after doing so, we were driving across the state line on 40 headed East on a three day trip to Indiana. I was ready to go, Andrew was ready to go, our cats in the back of my grossly overpacked Countryman were asleep (ready for whatever) and my parents, bless their heart, were in the Penske truck with a Honda being towed on the back.
As soon as we were in Indiana at the farm, the holidays came and passed with ease - celebration, and happiness. Just after the new year I was on my way to Detroit to meet up with the recruiter from Ford to try and get the job, my classmate Chase was doing the same and we were going to stay with a friend in Dearborn that already worked there. I had a blast and tried to make the grandest of impressions but it was a cattle call of sorts because there were BUSSES of prospective applicants wanting to work for Ford. I was truly wide eyed because I thought I held a golden ticket of sorts - and that was not the case.
The weeks that followed the NAIAS event were largely silent, I went with Andrew to Ohio to pick up a Toyota Land Cruiser that was priced right. In an act of financial desperation, and need of something to bide my time, I started to apply to local jobs in town that could provide a temporary amount of relief while I waited for the call from anyone in Motor City.
That call did not come.
So here I was on some Tuesday in late February, cleaning cars at a Kia dealership. I was mortified everyday when I went into that place, and when leaving imagining someone seeing me - thinking I'd be ruined. In that time another dealer network had actually reached out to me from about an hour away in Indianapolis - asking if I had interest in joining their team working as someone who would essentially build up their self-branded detailing and reconditioning team to be something greater than what was present. Again, I was told I was completely overqualified but they needed a body and I needed money. They asked what I was looking for when it came to income, I said $65k and they came back with 28. I lied to the completely incompetent Kia dealer management about me getting a job in another state and quit - going the following day to the new job. Andrew was also looking at jobs in the small town and found one, and it was by far the worst job he claimed to have ever had. I believed him and told him to go to back to Nashville, because there was a family owned pet store that was looking for his skill level to essentially save their business.
I was now doing a base level, essentially no experience needed job, in Indy. Devastated. It also hailed on my first day at this job.
About a month after I started, I moved about 15 minutes away from the job to a pretty nice apartment, I could barely afford it but it had a garage and enough space for my tantrums. The cats would bounce back and forth between Indy and Nashville and the distance between Andrew and I, having already been strained, was slowly but surely unraveling.
Very quickly at this new job I realized that the manager I reported to was incompetent with computers (my god this becomes a whole theme later) - and worse yet, he was a creep. Speaking about how devout of a christian man he was, visiting the Noah's Ark site in Kentucky while simultaneously telling me how he'll watch his step-daughters through their window changing clothes. I know you're thinking to yourself, did I just read that? Yes, you did. He did much worse things but that's not the focus here - I was hell fucking bent on making the best out of this situation - and at times it just felt like it was getting worse. Especially showing up to work with my manager being Dr. Creeper.
His boss, the guy we both reported to, was a dream by comparison. I was told to basically live in fear of the dude cause he's an ass that made enemies quickly, and I found the opposite - but this opinion was also coming from my immediate manager and I knew better than to trust him past the first week. Its funny when you spend 7 years in Los Angeles, the assholes you meet outside the city are waaaay easier to dissect and understand. I got this guy, he was an easy read and he was looking to make a lot of money and expected everyone to do their best (that's pretty straightforward). So we had a great vibe. He saw my drive and changed my pay plan to be based on monthly sales and what money our section of the company makes and I could basically make another thousand bucks commission on top of my base ass income.
Anything to take the weight of the world off my shoulders.
Late in the year Andrew and I were dealt a challenging blow, the Land Cruiser he had was on month 8 of giving him an enormous amount of trouble. It was visiting the shop once a month and was taking weeks to fix. We were told that it had rust, not just like a little rust, but the state of Ohio's annual allotment of salt for the year - rust. It was eating through everything and wasn't going to stop and now was unsafe. Shit. We sold it at a loss and it strained Andrew and I to a worse degree. He resented me for having a car and a place so far away from him, and I resented the fact that he was itching to get his own place in Nashville and wanting me to move there.
Fall, my 30th birthday came with no fanfare (thank god). Then Winter came, and Andrew and I seemed like we were pulling out all the stops to make it work but it didn't. I found out later that he had started talking to someone else in October. I can't say I blame him - I was carrying enough doubt for myself, I knew I had let everyone down and I didn't tell anyone that I was days away from ending my life. The hole I was in was so dark, so cold, so hopeless, that recovery was now impossible. Our relationship had the all clear to crash land.
I don't know what specifically pulled me out of it - after the holidays, I had tried to make purchases for friends, family, coworkers that I cared for. I didn't speak about my issues with anyone really. I was lying to everyone. I was avoiding one problem by living in my work. Isolation was welcome.
In late January, Andrew and I separated and at that point I knew it was finally freeing for him and for me it was liberating to just have his disappointment in me not be my focus. Somewhere on Reddit, my go-to for when Twitter is being too vague, actually had a post from someone who had attempted suicide and one top comment on the topic caught my eye - and it read something like
"Stay alive out of spite, stick around to make all the thoughts you've ever had about quitting and the people who want you to fail to have to live in the impatience of the fact that you haven't quit yet - what do you have to lose?" although that's not exactly what it said, it hit me like a ton of bricks.
What did I have to lose?
Fear of fucking up had literally made me fuck up - and I was so scared of failure that personally I was living in it out of a two bedroom apartment in Indianapolis. What happens if I push back more at work when I want to be brutally honest? What happens if I tell the truth to everyone around me that Im suffering and there's some things I don't know shit about? What happens if I say "no" more, or what happens if I say "yes" more?
I didn't care what happened next and in turn it sort of made me fearless about my job. I showed up and stayed late to make as much money as I could, I fought hard for consistency, and I brought Chick-Fil-A to the weekend detailers because they were being treated like garbage and these guys worked the hardest - and I was intent on making them money. Without them I didn't make a cent so I made sure they knew I appreciated them. I worked hard to build a report with the people that counted on me, but the last three months I was at that location I went through hell trying to make it perfect, and it worked.
Early February, the main boss - not creeper - was telling me over the course of the last year we brought in collectively a million more dollars for the business than the previous year and I was shocked and satisfied at where I had helped. Creeper boss was talking more about how he wanted to look at other jobs because he then couldn't keep up with me, and for the record, I was doing his job after 90 days from when I started - so I encouraged him to interview elsewhere and made him think I was doing the same. I had applied at other places but no one was reaching back and if I got another email from GM saying I wasn't what they were looking for I was going to pop - so I sent out one last batch of emails and reentered my focus on the job at hand.
In that same conversation in early February, he told me that there was a dealership in Minnesota that was wanting a piece of our pie - because they were one of the larger volume Honda stores in the midwest and thought we could bring in some real money with the line of work we did. I'll never forget the conversation I had with, lets call him Chris because that's his name, I said "if you ever need any help knocking sense into those guys let me know" - and he asked me if I would be willing to relocate if that's what came up and I said YES....sure!.....why not right?
It would never happen, I thought, so I drove home and did my daily routine of laundry, dinner, Netflix, bed.
Well wouldn't you know it, but a few weeks later I was sitting in a conference room with him discussing what the job requirements would be as well as pay. $55k with opportunities for bonuses. Cool. Its more money than I currently made so I signed.
We flew up in early March to Minneapolis, there was an ice storm the morning we departed, almost shutting Indianapolis down - all so I could see what the dealership looked like, the hotel room I had looked over the store next door, It was a Honda, Mitsubishi, and BMW Motorcycles dealer. As soon as we had landed though I was pulled into the GM's office for the interview - and it was with 8 people in the room. I was interrogated and ran their gauntlet of challenging questions and typical run-throughs of day-to-day scenarios. I was hired on the spot and we went out for a very expensive dinner. The next day I was given a Ridgeline to drive to find a place to live, and I found a place that was expensive but new and right around the corner - I threw my deposit down and flew home. My parents were elated and concerned if this could work - I told them I had four weeks to move. Things began to move more quickly - Andrew was excited for me too.
In that time there was a new GM that had started at the JLR store I was over, listed cars in inventory that had lease deals. I found a new Discovery 5 Diesel that was essentially a steal - so I got it on lease. The creeper manager...I don't know.... in an effort to not have his moment at our work not be overshadowed by my exit put in his two week notice and his last day was literally the same as mine. Everyone was confused...hell, I still am. Mind you this guy was 50 years old and acted like he was 17. He was a textbook shit-stirrer, that schemed people out of money and time and spoke down to any minority person of color like it was all he was steeped in his whole life. Shame.
Moving day, my mother rode shotgun out to Minneapolis with me with my car full - I was going to fly back the following week for a Nissan parts truck the Honda store had bought from an in-network Nissan store in Indy, and my dad was going to be in the U-haul - both of us carrying all my stuff through both trucks. After getting settled in Minneapolis, dad flew home and my first few weeks at this job were underway. It snowed 21 inches mid-April and I began to become concerned.
Andrew came to visit a month or so after I moved, he wanted to come see it all and we explored out and around the city that I knew some, Mall of America, some museums, etc. It was good to see him but he wasn't about to move for me nor I for him so we said our goodbyes and off he went. The next day I downloaded a dating app and began the search for a new experience.
In the time up in MSP, I started making some awesome friends. Like top dollar, holy-shit-where-have-you-been all-my-life friends. Daily operations were slow to start but I preferred it that way because this was unlike any other job I had ever had - and I was attempting to move the ship pretty far in a short amount of time. I began dating too. Everything was happening quickly and slowly - that's the only way I really know how to describe it - but while I was at my job, I was realizing that the team did not know what they were doing and worse, hated change - for which I was brought in to do - so there was little opportunity given to me to enforce my successful process over a period of time because people who were not directly affected by my process began demanding changes be made for their personal benefit. As you know that's a recipe for a mess - and If I had to say thats one of the many reasons modern dealers don't succeed, its because they think the fastest way to making money is also the shortest. So my response is I got mad, so mad that I began applying for other jobs rather quickly - to everywhere.
Back when I started the job in Indy, I had been in contact with Embraer and even did an over-the-phone interview with them. Turns out my good friend Chase (that had attended NAIAS) with me went there instead. (Hi Chase! Go you!)
So I looked at other aircraft manufacturers for employment and one caught my eye rather quickly. Cirrus Aircraft. They were looking for a designer, at their design studio in Knoxville, TN - and I applied.
From there, I had a lengthy interview process, simultaneously letting the Minneapolis situation play out to failure - attempting to teach everyone on my team what I knew and lead by example - while the other management team was expecting me to reinvent the wheel - as noted about computer competency earlier, the manager that ended up replacing me proudly exclaimed in a meeting prior to my exit that he "is not good at computers", I was delighted to leave.
So while the Cirrus team was deliberating on wether to hire me or not, I quietly left to visit my parents in Indiana, in October for my birthday. On my birthday my father and I went to the executive airport in Indy and looked at Cirrus planes they had on the ramp, walking around them and determining wether I am good enough to be working as a designer for them. Dad and I were driving back to the farm when I got the call, a job offer was formally being sent in writing to my email and they would like for me to join the team. What a birthday gift, I was gobsmacked - and cried happy tears.
Within an hour I sent my formal resignation to the management team at the now former job - and I quickly started working out logistics to get my personal belongings out of Minneapolis and to Knoxville, TN. Andrew flew up to help me pack and that gave he and I some time to begin a mending process.
This was back in October 2018 - I can happily report that my new management and design team is the most competent set of folks I have ever surrounded myself with. I wake up everyday knowing I am going to a dream job. The experiences I have had so far are lifelong memories. I will never forget this time in my life, the beginning of my everyday truth.
I just wanted to write it all down. I skipped over a lot, some was intended and other details skipped because they were really dark and don't deserve being recalled, and details are absent because they deserve a special place in my heart and I am saving them for their own post, perhaps later in the year. I didn't have plans on updating this blog, but its worth noting that even though I didn't have a job directly out of college, and even though I was just above scraping shit off the floor (sometimes even confused if I was already doing so) - I learned a lesson in that the game is long - longer than you want and sometimes when you look back on everything that has happened over the past 9-10 years and however long this blog has been active, and you see growth, pain, more pain, successes, and victories. Most importantly, the honesty of it all. The importance of a support system for your dreams.
This new job is by no means easy, but when it's something you love to do, the challenges are understood and worked through. The thing is, I didn't approach the previous jobs any differently, this puzzle piece just fit more perfectly - and I had to work to find it - and I am empowered by the people that are showing me the way this company works, because they see the potential in me.
Im living the most dynamic version of my life and I couldn't be happier. Andrew moves here within the week because that takes work too, and takes two
