In the Beginning

This is a blog I'm writing to describe my life as it is currently. I figure that rather than a journal, I will instead put up a blog so that anyone who can get any part or portion of enlightenment from my story will do so. I don't know that this blog will help anyone other than me (or even me, honestly) but that is my goal here. I'm ambitious and one way or another I will survive. I intend to document my success or failure here, in this blog. Maybe I'll not dedicate time to this - maybe I'll be a prolific writer on the subject. I don't know. I'll do what little I can and no matter what, at least my struggles will be given testimony here.

- Andrew Alexander, June 5th, 2009

A bit of past history:

I grew up poor. Very, very poor. Perhaps I was better off in some ways than other children. My mother was overprotective. I was not allowed to leave the house - socialize or anything. I didn't get free until I moved to college when I was eighteen. My home environment was still horrid. My step-father was a crack addict, I was oftentimes homeless (humorous story on that later). In some ways, this has severely crippled me over the years. In other ways, I think it saved me. I did not do drugs, alcohol or engage in any extremely risky behaviors.

This environment led me to realize two things: Life can sometimes be shitty - and you have to deal with that one way or another. You can't ultimately let it get you down - you can't bow out (God, I sound like a motivational poster!) and that academic study, an education, was the only thing that would keep me from the same fate.

I went to college. That was when my life began. I had my first real girlfriend, I met my first real long term friends. It was a small midwestern college - I attended because it was cheap and my GPA was horrible. I suffered through a bout of depression my Junior year of High School, and the instability of other years made it so that I felt I had no chance of getting into a better school (I was wrong, but that is besides the point). I stayed at that college, and changed majors twice. All in all I ended up doing five years before I had some idea what I wanted to do. Familial pressure didn't help. In my family, college was associated with liberalism and communism.

I graduated, still relatively sheltered. I had never had anyone teach me how to drive, I had only worked for a year - my family encouraged me not to, saying that I would be working for the rest of my life. Overall, while I was educated in books, I was still growing in life knowledge.

I realized that I was behind the curve in many ways. I begged, borrowed and paid off friends to let me use their cars. I had them teach me to drive enough to pass my test, bought a car with what little money I could and practiced. I got a job as a delivery driver for a Dominos Pizza. That was my driving school.

I applied for other jobs, but none came through. I kept working at Dominos, planning on applying for graduate school in the late fall/early winter of 2008. Plans would work out otherwise. The car I bought first (from my sister no less), started to have brake problems. I paid for them to be fixed with a registered but non-shop mechanic (I was dirt poor). He did a very poor job, and I got into a car crash - destroying the car. I had to buy an entirely new one, financed. That destroyed my goal of applying for graduate school in 2008.

So I kept working at Dominos for months and months. While a pizza delivery job may not be very glamorous, it does pay fairly well - especially compared to what I was used to. I kept working at Dominos, saving up some money (but mostly my car payment, insurance and rent ate most of it). I did occasionally spend money on some things. Dinner out, I took very cheap trips (under $60 to Washington D.C., and under $200 to New York City - note that is total cost of the trips for each)

In April of 2009, my then boss at Dominos' uncle died. He was asked, by his aunt, to take over her store. The management above him decided to bring in a new manager who tended to be corrupt. He began firing employees every couple of weeks for made up infractions. They were only the employees he didn't like. I was told I was on the list to be fired the day I got back from New York City, if I didn't ship up. Already being a hard worker (as attested by every other manager there) I worked even harder. But he had hired five new drivers (as summer began and our workload decreased) and like three other individuals before me, I too got fired.

That is my backstory.