Some things we want can blind us from being who we were made to be: A personal story
Sometimes this drive worked for me, although my motivations often had less to do with being the best I could be than they did with becoming some sort of idealized, fantasy version of myself.
At the age of sixteen, I came home from school one sunny day in May and informed my mother that I would not be going back to Willamette High. She set a steaming casserole down on the dinner table.
“Excuse me?”
“I made a deal with the principal.”
“What kind of deal?”
“I told him I was bored and I’d likely get into trouble if I didn’t find some way to challenge myself. So I asked for a diploma in exchange for promising to go to college."
“And he said yes?”
I brushed past her, on the way to the back door that led the converted shed where I roomed. “What else would he say?” The door slammed behind me as I exited. And just like that, my high school career had come to an end.
By this time in my seasoned life, I’d achieved a moderate level of popularity through a combination of being the worst behaved kid in the room at any given time, possessing proprietary strategies for scoring Big Bear 40s or various brands of the kind of vodka that comes in big plastic jugs, and having a knack for inventing creative strategies for pranking teachers. I had also come to understand the fleeting nature of popularity and decided to turn my attention to something more endurable. Getting rich.
As far as I knew at the time, my birth father was a drug dealer, and not a very good one.
He lived in a 60-square-foot trailer behind someone’s house. I had his specific location narrowed down to the state of California. My stepfather, whose last name I took at the age of six, was a plumber for the city of Eugene. He made a decent income somewhere between working and middle class. But I had set my sights a little higher. I saw myself living somewhere in the neighborhood of Hearst Castle—or the White House. I was part of the smoke-free class of 2000. Everyone said I could be anything I wanted. A bank account with nine or ten digits seemed a reasonable expectation.
So the summer after I ended my public education, I began to experience my foray into a wonderful world known as earning the big bucks—starting with selling vacuum cleaners. I learned many advanced sales techniques such as throwing dirt on someone’s carpet when they open the door so I can illustrate the wonderful attributes of my Majestic Air Vacuum Cleaner Extraordinaire. But at the end of three months, during which I sold exactly one machine, my mother pulled rank and made me quit. The sales manager said it was the worst decision I’d ever make and that I was a douchebag for doing what my mommy told me to. I thought he was right, but what could I do? My mom had told me to quit.
Based on the enormous success I’d had in sales so far, I transitioned into car stereos. I accidentally wrote my birth year wrong on the employment application, inadvertently giving the impression that I was 18, when in fact I was 16—an age that the state of Oregon deemed unsuitable for such occupations. Fortunately for me, and my mother, I was more suited to selling Polk Audio tweeters and Monster Cable 1/4” Adapters than household cleaning appliances that doubled as air fresheners.
During this time, I’d all but mastered the art of annoying girls
with the secret intent of flirting and had managed to successfully win the attentions of a young women named Anna. She was a catch well above my station, in part because she was two and a half years older, had a van, and carried a four-inch pocket knife.
Pop quiz. What do you get when you combine a boy who sleeps in a shed with its own private entrance, a girl with a van, and parents who think this boy and girl shouldn’t see each other anymore? So one day Anna came to me with a pregnancy test.
“What’s that?” I said.
“What do you think?"
“Who’s it for?"
“Who do you think?”
(Anna said that's not how she remembers the conversation going, but it was something like that)
Like I said, I always wanted to get a jump start on life. What I got was two pink lines. And at that moment, I can honestly say I didn’t question what I was going to do. I was going to be a dad. And I knew Anna and I were going to be together forever.
The next morning I got up an hour early.
I was the first to arrive at Future Shop Electronics Superstore. It was commission, so you could work as many hours as you liked. I knew I had to start providing for my new family so I was going to be there from open to close. Not only was I going to be the best breadwinner who ever won bread, but I was going to have enough cash left over to take my baby out to steak dinner every night. Or at least Olive Garden. But when all the staff had arrived that morning, the manager informed us that the store was closing and we’d all be out of work in a few weeks.
Two months later—after my mom signed the permission slip—Anna and I were married and I was unemployed. My drive was fueled on Top Ramen, my love for Anna, and a desperate need to prove our families, pastors, and friends wrong. Fortunately for us, Shania Twain had the forethought to put music to our mantra: “They said, I’ll bet they’ll never make it. But just look at us holdin’ on.” We, like Shania, and whoever she was singing about, weren’t going to be a statistic.
Unless by statistic you mean standing in an unemployment line.
That was one statistical class that I found myself a part of several times over the following years. And though my plans of becoming rich and successful were temporarily delayed, I was soon on my way again. Over the following 15 years, I tried my hand at a couple different careers. I’ve been paid to be an electrician, songwriter, gardener, plumber, videographer, photographer, fabricator, welder, contractor, developer, graphic designer, web designer, house framer, narrator, illustrator, backhoe operator, truck driver, copywriter, cook, buyer, investor, blogger, speaker, conference promoter, engineer, architect, delivery man, actor, marketer, purchasing consultant, art framer, project manager, eBay reseller, programmer, web startup founder, musician, store manager, and paper boy. I’ve sold vacuum cleaners, radios, appliances, advertising, paper towels, buffing pads, pork, beef, sausage, bacon, fine art, frames, home audio installations, manufactured products, websites, my own photography, clean room equipment and supplies, car parts, and used cars. And I’ve volunteered as a dance instructor, church elder, worship leader, nonprofit board director, and college professor.
One day, during my clean room equipment manufacturing phase, one of my clients handed me a stack of business cards. A knot grew in my stomach as I flipped through them one by one. Each had my name, embossed proudly in the corner. And in the other corner, a different company logo. In just the three years I’d known this client, I’d changed my company name—and my business focus—five or six times. Lucky for me, those were the only changes he knew about. I realize know that he was just teasing me, but I felt a great deal of shame over my nature. I was addicted to change, constantly shifting from one idea to the next, searching for something that would come easier than the last project. Even when I had something going well, I couldn’t resist trying something new—usually in the hope that it would be easier, more fun, or just different.
I spent 15 years and dozens of careers trying to discover what I was good at. Never once did it occur to me that there might be a string that ran through all these changes. All through school, whatever teacher I had would encourage me to explore a career in the field they taught. The science teacher thought I had a talent for science. The English teacher thought I should become a writer. The PE teacher thought—well scratch that. I wasn’t ever any good at PE. But I was frustrated by their responses. I had ten different people telling me to do ten different things with my life. Looking back, I can see what they were really telling me was that I was good at learning. They each thought I was good at whatever subject they taught because in fact, I was good at all the subjects. This same skill enabled me to do about three hundred different careers—maybe not brilliantly, but well enough to provide for my family.
I was blind to the idea that loving change might be an asset.
I couldn’t see it at the time, but I didn’t want to be like either of my two dads. On the one hand, my birth father was an idea guy who never did anything. He was a genius. He could have been a brain surgeon, or a math professor, or one of the people who make Top Pot doughnuts, because whoever makes those things must be a genius. He never did anything with his life, and I desperately didn’t want to be like him. On the other hand, my stepfather was a caring man who tried his best to step in and be a dad to me. But he was steady. Really steady. He might be happy working the same job as a plumber for the city of Eugene for twenty years. As far as I was concerned, working the same job for twenty years was the kind of thing people had to do in hell.
I had a preconceived notion of the person I was going to be, and I was going to do everything in my power to become that person. Even if I didn’t know who that person was, or if I wasn’t meant to be that person. All the while, I never stopped to really honestly ask myself “what am I made to be?”
I still can’t say that I’ve found the answer to that question. I may not know for sure until my time here on earth is done. But I’m a lot closer today than I was when I was unwilling to accept myself for who I was. I can see now how the evidence had been knocking me on the noggin since I was in preschool.
I wanted to be great at making money so I was in sales. I wanted to be a successful businessman so I bought and sold companies. I wanted to be a great songwriter so I spent all the money I’d made in business flying to Nashville and recording demos. Because I was good at learning, I was able to pick up a variety of skills well enough to get by for a while, but they never quite fit. And I grew tired of them as soon as I’d learned about 70% of what it might take to reach mastery—a point where I reached a level of diminishing return on my investment of energy. It wasn’t until I let go of my agenda, giving up my desires for wealth, fame, and success, that I was able to see the string that ran through all of those different careers.
So what does a person do that is good at learning? Well, I suppose there are a number of options. Teaching. Writing. Research. Creating life-changing doughnuts. I’m still not sure where I land, but I’m a lot more narrowed down than I was before. It’s been pretty nice to not include in my potential list of careers every possibility known to mankind. I’m happier now, more fulfilled in my work, even more focused. By discovering more about my uniqueness, I was able to narrow my drive and my desire for change. If you compare it to bowling, before I was throwing balls all over the place. I was throwing balls in the parking lot. Now, I might still toss my ball onto the lane next to me, or land one in the gutter, but I’m no longer trying to get a strike at the nacho counter.
I realize this is a very personal story. I hesitated to even share my story because this isn’t about me. It’s about you. But I wanted you to know where I’m coming from. To know that perhaps there is someone else who has experienced some of the same frustrations that you might have had in your quest to find your place in this world. Your details will be different than mine. Not everyone wants to be rich, famous, and successful. But I bet there are some things you do want that might be blinding you from seeing what you were made to be.
You have different talents than I do. Everyone does. But talents are like colors. There isn’t a right talent, or a better talent. There is only you. And the talents you have are precious, no matter how many you have, or how brightly you perceive them to shine. You don’t get to go back into the womb and re-roll your DNA. And I hope you don’t want to. Because the world needs you, just the way you are.
Thank you for joining me in this celebration of uniqueness.
I'm working on my sixth book, The You Gap, and intend to include some of this content in it. Please help me make The You Gap better by leaving a comment below.
Amazon shopping spree and book giveaway
To celebrate (1) the launch of Evan Burl on January 6th, (2) the Kickstarter campaign that aims to fight fatherlessness with fiction and most importantly (3) you, I'm giving away $1000 in prizes including more than 50 signed books, a $250 Amazon shopping spree and dozens of other gifts from great authors around the world.
The winner of our last giveaway is Chris Harris!
Along with winning a signed copy of Evan Burl and the Falling, Vol. 1-2 Gloria joins the other semi-finalists in the $250 Amazon gift card giveaway. Claim your prize by emailing
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Watch for my next blog to see if you've won. These are some places to read the blog: Facebook, Twitter, in your email, on my website, on Amazon, or on Goodreads.
Here is a list of the semifinalists for the $250 Amazon giveaway!
Jessica Mamac, Kristen Patinka, Lou Scott, Scott Bothel, John Wargowsky, Tammy Dalley, Carl Smith, Heather Miles, Sally Hannoush, Christopher Burrell, Cathy Smith, Blake Goldstein, Katrina Epperson, Janae Schiele, Vanessa Rasanen, Katrina Umland, Deanna Wiseburn, Hope Clippinger, Rebecca Ann Baker, Lisa Whitten, Gavin Imes, Robin Baker, April Reynolds, Gloria Macioci Blaney, Chris Harris
