- Joined
- Dec 27, 2021
- Messages
- 26
Good evening, Fastlaners!
I believe I've had the heart of an entrepreneur my whole life, but I never had the audacity to heed the call. After a long, hard road I'm finally here. Starting on this new journey with an amazing wife and at the best part of my life. But, I'm here to meet people, get motivated, motivate and help others, and to do that I wanted to share some of who I am and how I got here.
I was born in 1980 in a small city in Central Massachusetts. My parents divorced when I was 10 weeks old or so, and my biological father wasn't much of a part of my life early on.
My mother got on welfare so that she could afford to send my sister and I to daycare, and she could attend a local community college. She ended up marrying my step father, an engineer, when I was 3 years old. We moved to a small, quiet and rural town about an hour and a half east of where I was born.
Together, they lived a very frugal life. My step father was very strict, but in hindsight it's clear he loved being a dad. We just didn't click. I blamed him and his style of parenting back then.
When I was 14 and struggling with my mother's behavior and the strict set of rules set by my step-father, I moved in with my bio-dad an hour and a half away.
I always thought my "real" father was a rock star. He'd show up once or twice a year, lavish me with Star Wars toys or shopping sprees, and then disappear again for months on end. It's easy to appear to be a rock star for a weekend here or there.
While my step father had a rule for everything, my father had no rules. When I moved in with him, this was very liberating. Benign neglect... turned out to just be neglect.
"Real dad" had a used furniture store which he stocked with items found at local auctions. I'd help move items from the auction to the store, deliveries, etc.
One day a 90 year old man ran a red light, T-boned the small pickup truck my dad used to move furniture and sent my dad, step-mother and half-brother to the hospital. My dad didn't have car insurance, medical insurance, or any of that fancy stuff. We lost everything. The house, the store, most of our possessions.
We moved into a small apartment complex near my grandmother's house. The apartment complex was situated between the local dump and the town graveyard.
A few months later, we packed everything we owned up into a small windowless van straight out of the '70s and drove to Florida. 24 hours straight through. I'm guessing my dad owed money on our apartment that he didn't plan on paying.
We stayed in hotel rooms in Daytona Beach for a few months, until we ran out of cash. Then we started spending the nights in the van. It was parked in a parking lot behind a bar where my dad worked under the table. My dad, step mother, half sister, her boyfriend, half-brother and me. All sleeping on blankets covering boxes of our possessions. We were allowed to eat free chicken wings from the buffet during off hours.
I missed a lot of school during this time. I started my fourth high school in Daytona Beach at Mainland High School the day before mid-term exams. I didn't fair well on classes I had missed the first 5 months of, and I quit the next term thinking I'd go back the following year. When I re-applied, I was told Florida doesn't allow drop outs to re-enroll, but they offered to test me for academic ability and place me in a self-paced program for dropouts. I scored at the level of a college graduate when I was 16 and had missed nearly a full year of school at that point.
I went on to finish my junior and senior year in about 5 months, maintained a 4.0 GPA and talked my way out of getting expelled when I was caught smoking before class. They didn't have much tolerance for former dropouts making more bad decisions.
Shortly after I graduated, I moved back in with my mother and step father in Massachusetts. My relationship with my mother only got worse. I got kicked out a year later and joined the Air Force a month after that.
I stayed in after my first enlistment because I was terrified of being homeless. That fear kept up for the first 15 years. The last 7 of my career (22 total), I was able to enjoy for the journey that it was. I overcame much of the negativity, self-sabotaging behaviors I had learned early in life. I dealt with my huge, fragile ego. And I escaped an awful marriage to the worst possible match I could have made.
In 2015, I earned a Bachelor's degree in IT Management and in 2018 I received my MBA with a focus on Marketing. I'm now retired from the Air Force (passive income), and working in the private sector for a solid salary.
Most importantly, I've married the most amazing partner on the planet. Together, we're raising my 3 boys and together, we're taking this journey.
So, here I am. Hoping to learn from each of you, contribute what I can of value and free myself and my family from the script of mediocrity.
I believe I've had the heart of an entrepreneur my whole life, but I never had the audacity to heed the call. After a long, hard road I'm finally here. Starting on this new journey with an amazing wife and at the best part of my life. But, I'm here to meet people, get motivated, motivate and help others, and to do that I wanted to share some of who I am and how I got here.
A brief account of my backstory:
I was born in 1980 in a small city in Central Massachusetts. My parents divorced when I was 10 weeks old or so, and my biological father wasn't much of a part of my life early on.
My mother got on welfare so that she could afford to send my sister and I to daycare, and she could attend a local community college. She ended up marrying my step father, an engineer, when I was 3 years old. We moved to a small, quiet and rural town about an hour and a half east of where I was born.
Together, they lived a very frugal life. My step father was very strict, but in hindsight it's clear he loved being a dad. We just didn't click. I blamed him and his style of parenting back then.
When I was 14 and struggling with my mother's behavior and the strict set of rules set by my step-father, I moved in with my bio-dad an hour and a half away.
I always thought my "real" father was a rock star. He'd show up once or twice a year, lavish me with Star Wars toys or shopping sprees, and then disappear again for months on end. It's easy to appear to be a rock star for a weekend here or there.
While my step father had a rule for everything, my father had no rules. When I moved in with him, this was very liberating. Benign neglect... turned out to just be neglect.
"Real dad" had a used furniture store which he stocked with items found at local auctions. I'd help move items from the auction to the store, deliveries, etc.
One day a 90 year old man ran a red light, T-boned the small pickup truck my dad used to move furniture and sent my dad, step-mother and half-brother to the hospital. My dad didn't have car insurance, medical insurance, or any of that fancy stuff. We lost everything. The house, the store, most of our possessions.
We moved into a small apartment complex near my grandmother's house. The apartment complex was situated between the local dump and the town graveyard.
A few months later, we packed everything we owned up into a small windowless van straight out of the '70s and drove to Florida. 24 hours straight through. I'm guessing my dad owed money on our apartment that he didn't plan on paying.
We stayed in hotel rooms in Daytona Beach for a few months, until we ran out of cash. Then we started spending the nights in the van. It was parked in a parking lot behind a bar where my dad worked under the table. My dad, step mother, half sister, her boyfriend, half-brother and me. All sleeping on blankets covering boxes of our possessions. We were allowed to eat free chicken wings from the buffet during off hours.
I missed a lot of school during this time. I started my fourth high school in Daytona Beach at Mainland High School the day before mid-term exams. I didn't fair well on classes I had missed the first 5 months of, and I quit the next term thinking I'd go back the following year. When I re-applied, I was told Florida doesn't allow drop outs to re-enroll, but they offered to test me for academic ability and place me in a self-paced program for dropouts. I scored at the level of a college graduate when I was 16 and had missed nearly a full year of school at that point.
I went on to finish my junior and senior year in about 5 months, maintained a 4.0 GPA and talked my way out of getting expelled when I was caught smoking before class. They didn't have much tolerance for former dropouts making more bad decisions.
Shortly after I graduated, I moved back in with my mother and step father in Massachusetts. My relationship with my mother only got worse. I got kicked out a year later and joined the Air Force a month after that.
I stayed in after my first enlistment because I was terrified of being homeless. That fear kept up for the first 15 years. The last 7 of my career (22 total), I was able to enjoy for the journey that it was. I overcame much of the negativity, self-sabotaging behaviors I had learned early in life. I dealt with my huge, fragile ego. And I escaped an awful marriage to the worst possible match I could have made.
In 2015, I earned a Bachelor's degree in IT Management and in 2018 I received my MBA with a focus on Marketing. I'm now retired from the Air Force (passive income), and working in the private sector for a solid salary.
Most importantly, I've married the most amazing partner on the planet. Together, we're raising my 3 boys and together, we're taking this journey.
So, here I am. Hoping to learn from each of you, contribute what I can of value and free myself and my family from the script of mediocrity.
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