Looking back...

Looking back, things seemed to line up WAY too well for me not to be here. After more  thinking, had I gotten on at Imagewest an earlier semester, I wouldn't have had the interest in Chicago at the time and probably would not have made the connections I did that last semester. I wanted to get on at Imagewest a lot sooner, but things happened otherwise. I wanted to spend a summer working with Nike, but ended up going to Gatlinburg instead. Both options were not what I wanted nor what I though I needed in life, but they both ended up being far better alternatives that what I could have imagined.

More often than not, I've been the victim of Murphy's Law. I've always seemed to have computer crashes at the MOST inoppurtune time, been in more wrecks (none my fault) than your average person, have almost lost my dad to a freak allergic reaction my freshman year in college, and have had other things that can be huge stressors constantly hitting me. All that sucked at the time, but ended up preparing me for my last semester of college. My last semester was the most stressful one ever, doing TONS of work for Imagewest, while still trying to balance school work, another advertising job at the school paper, track and field at WKU, CRU, and somehow still having a normal college student social life. Because I had so much not go right and stress me out in the past, all that stress this past semester was just another day at that point. That balancing act appeared on a resume and I'm pretty sure helped me in my last interview.

All the bad things in my life that happened to me just mentally prepared me to handle what was to come. It wasn't fun at the time, but in a weird way I am glad things never went quite right for me all the time. Plus, I know that things could have been a LOT worse.  I was more prepared to handle other things and am definitely more grateful for what I have now. Had I not had so many things go wrong growing up, I know I wouldn't be near as thankful for the little things in life now.

I've learned that what I want isn't what I need. Sometimes I need something to blow up in my face to learn and grow. In distance running, the only way I got faster was when I went through a lot of pain in practices and races, not when I just jogged around for a few minutes. I feel like life in general will be the same. Not saying that life needs to be painful in order to be fruitful, but that sometimes when I don't get want I want or haven't been dealt a fair hand at times, that it is just another opportunity to learn and grow from that situation. I've learned that what you do with those bad experiences makes all the difference. That's why I think bad things happen to good people. Not because life sucks or they're getting what's coming or being punished. I think it's because God's using those rough patches to help us, teach us and make us better people overall. I've still got a LOT to learn.