college

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I Started My Career Exactly 20 Years Ago Today

Now that I think about it… When people ask me what I do for a living, I usually just keep it vague, by simply saying, “I work from home.”

I’ve learned that most of the time, people don’t really have follow-up questions anyway.

What do I do for a living? I work from home.

It was twenty years ago today, on January 2nd, 2006; that I accidentally began my career… as a recruiter.

I hire diesel mechanics (and previously truck drivers) from all across the country for the company I work for. It’s basically a sales job under the division of HR. Every month, I have a monthly quota to fill, but it doesn’t stress me out at all. I am motivated by the challenge. I love what I do!

I never knew what I wanted to be when I grew up. I was more than halfway through college before I landed on majoring in English; after discovering I was the only guy in my entire dorm who actually liked writing papers and actually enjoyed speech class.

Did I have a passion for it? No.

Did it come easy for me so that I ended up graduating on the Dean’s List, despite nearly failing basic college math and science classes my freshman year? Yes.

Shortly after moving to Nashville, I decided to visit a temp agency to see if they could find me some gigs to do, in addition to my part-time job I had unloading trucks for Fed-Ex.

At the end of my first day on the first assignment they gave me, I asked the employer how long the job would be for… assuming the answer would be just a week or two.

Instead, the supervisor for that job responded, “Well, actually… permanently.” So I just went along with that answer for the next 12 and a half years, until the company eventually closed down the office at that location.

At that point, I had accumulated well over a decade of experience, so naturally, another company snatched me up to fill their recruiter position. And now, I’ve been at my current company for over 7 and a half years.

It sounds weird to say out loud: As of today, I have 20 years of recruiting experience.

Now I’m imagining the absurdity of the current version of me traveling back in time to tell the college freshman version of myself:

“Okay, so just get an English degree and then once you graduate college, take the first full-time job you are offered, which will be in recruiting. That’s what you’ll be doing for a living. Oh, yeah… and at some point, you’ll be able to start doing your job much more efficiently by never  even going to an office and instead, working from your house.”

Yeah, that definitely would have sounded like someone from the future talking to me.

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So I Guess I’ve Always Been a Side Hustler; Being a “Gum Dealer” in High School and Running a Convenience Store from My College Dorm Room

Looking back, I realize now that I’ve actually always been a side hustler; even in high school and college. Earlier today, I published an article declaring that my 5 SEO side hustles all made me a minimum of $1,000 each in 2018. But that mentality has been a part of me, undeniably, since at least when I was a teenager in high school. (See picture above.)

Here on the first day of 2019, I am learning a little bit more about myself. The fact that I have 5 side hustles as a 37 year-old man makes perfect sense, considering my scheming ways back to when I was a teenager.

When I started high school, I couldn’t help that notice that chewing gum was high in demand in the halls of my high school. It just so happened that it was weekly tradition that I would accompany my mom in buying groceries. I noticed that I could buy a multi-pack of Wrigley’s gum at nearly a wholesale price for $1.25; which contained 10 packs of gum (each of which contained 5 sticks of gum), then I could sell each pack for just a quarter. By the time I sold the 10 packs, when I could easily do in a 10 minute break, I had made $2.50. In other words, I was making 100% profit!

It didn’t took long before I became known as “the gum dealer.”

This was great for me. I got to social with all the different groups of friends, and met new ones, by offering them the best deal on chewing gum during each of our two breaks each day during high school.

It was also during high school that I began making my own videos, on VHS. Not only did I direct a horror movie, called “Frosty Bites”…

But I also filmed hair videos, too…

In case you missed it, I made over $4,000 in 2018 from my most popular YouTube channel and its Amazon links, which focuses on men’s hair and beards. And that’s not counting my 2nd YouTube channel, as well. This is not a coincidence.

Then when I moved into my college dorm, Dorm 15 at Liberty University, I took my gum dealer experience and opened up my own convenience store, using two micro fridges, and buying all my products for wholesale price at WalMart.

I sold soda, Little Debbie snack cakes, Ramen noodles, Hot Pockets, and frozen burritos. I even let my customers heat up their food in my microwave, so they could hang out with me while their food was preparing. I appropriately named my store, The Freshman 15.

Those profits went to financing my mission trips to Thailand in the summers of 2003 and 2004, where I was a 4th grade teacher specializing in ESL…

then teaching conversation English to high school students and adults.

Some things just never change. I am and always have been a side hustler. This is simply part of my identity.

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When Your College Roommate from Nearly 16 Years Ago Reaches Out to You to Tell You He’ll Be Visiting in Nashville and You Actually Meet Up

I live in the Nashville, Tennessee area. I will occasionally see on Facebook or Instagram where people I went to college with were recently here and I’ll think, “I wish I would have known they were coming. I would have tried to meet up with them!” Perhaps too, it’s that people I knew from my twenties don’t realize I’ve lived here since 2005.

After all, Nashville truly is a cool city. Having just watched both seasons of Netflix’s Master of None in less than 7 days, I am freshly familiar with there even being a pivotal episode named after the city and that was filmed in the iconic spots downtown.

A month ago, I received a message from my college roommate from Liberty University from the 2002-2003 school year. It was Chris Haley, who introduced me to the concept that the state of Delaware actually exists, with its “no sales tax” and just 3 counties. (I visited his family one weekend with a car load of other students.)

He informed me his wife’s friend would be getting married in Nashville, and having learned that I became a stay-at-home dad 6 months ago, he figured I might be able to find a way to actually meet up. He was correct.

So this morning, we met at Legacy Coffee Co. and had a great time. I even talked him into being a special guest star on my YouTube channel with nearly 4,000 subscribers.

Back when we first met in Dorm 15 at Liberty University in the fall of 2002, he was 17 and I was 21.

Something we talked about today is just how much you don’t know about anything when you’re that age. So it’s really interesting to see how much we’ve changed, now that we’re ages 33 and 36 (though I turn 37 in a week).

What we learned is that despite not being around each other in about 15 years, after having lived in very close quarters for that entire year, was that we actually grew more alike having been apart so long.

We both are proud Libertarians now. And we both love playing our Martin guitars.

Of course I couldn’t not bring up that (in)famous picture from 2002 where, as a joke, he bought a fake silver shirt and fake leather pants and wore them at an event at our college. For the rest of the year, people who had figured out he was my roommate would come up to me and ask, “Was he serious about those clothes?”

I always loved to respond, “I’m not really sure…”

So yeah, it’s a pretty cool thing when you make plans to catch up with someone from back in the days when Creed and Nickelback were still kind of cool, and then you actually catch up with that person, and you genuinely have a great time.

And selfishly, I’ll admit as a stay-at-home dad, it was nice getting out of the house and hanging out with another guy!

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I am Not Returning My Diploma to Liberty University, Nor Did I Vote for Trump

Perhaps the truly most rebellious stance to have these days is to be neutral… about anything. We live in an undeniably polarized culture where being “outraged” by the behavior of other people is all the rage.

Meanwhile, my goal is to remove myself from a predictable system where I am forced to choose one side (and their ethnocentric agenda), then demonize the other side (along with their own ethnocentric agenda). I refuse to maintain a mindset in which I have to constantly have an emotional response ready for the half of the population…. who is perceptually wrong.

In case you are unaware, a growing number of Liberty University graduates are choosing to return their diplomas to Liberty University, on the basis that the current chancellor, Jerry Falwell Jr., has been openly supportive of controversial President Trump’s policies and responses.

The “Return Your Diploma to LU” movement, which currently contains more than 700 members, even has its own hashtag; which is #grandstander.

This is a buzzing story.

Journalists from secular publications have been quick to reach out to the members of the group. I know this because I’ve been keeping up with the comments on the closed group.

Meanwhile, I personally am proud to have graduated from Liberty University in 2005 with an English Degree. My attendance at Liberty University helped shape my views, my identity, and my future. I am proud, not ashamed, of my diploma from Liberty University.

Of all ironies though, the fact I did not vote for Donald Trump goes back to Dorm 15 at Liberty University back in 2003. It was during my years at LU that I secretly converted from a Republican to a Libertarian.

My friend Ryan, who lived in the dorm room next to mine, was able to convince me through his emotional intelligence, that America will only continue to be more divided and polarized if we continue to only choose one of two popular political sides (with its own non-negotiable agenda), opposed to the other side.

I do not condemn anyone participating in the “Return Your Diploma to LU”.

Nor did I actively support President Trump being elected; in fact, it was during my attendance at Liberty University that I retired my allegiance to the Republican Party.

But who knows, maybe had I not gone to Liberty University, I would still be a Republican today and would have voted for Trump?

Maybe the ultimately irony, though, is that in my attempt to remain neutral in a polarized society, I could still end up causing someone to be outraged.

 

 

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Movie Guy, at Your Service: The Social Network (Plus, Which Actors are Jewish)

Why this movie guy proclaims it to be “Movie of the Year”.

I am extremely picky when it comes to movies.  Extremely. Very seldom do I finish seeing a movie and say, “There’s nothing they could have done to make that any better.  It was perfect.”  But that’s what I said to my wife as I left the cinema on Saturday afternoon after seeing The Social Network.

For a person who hasn’t seen The Social Network yet, and especially for a person who hasn’t even seen a preview for it either, it would be easy to think of it as Facebook: The Movie, some light-hearted movie about how facebook got started.  Fortunately, the movie’s title doesn’t contain the word “facebook” in it.  “The Social Network” is the best possible title because the film retraces all of the random people it took to invent, expand, sustain, and make a confirmed success out of the website.

I always assumed that Harvard dropout Mark Zuckerberg himself was the responsible for it all.  Played by Jesse Eisenberg, facebook creator Zuckerberg comes across as an obsessed college student with Aspergers (he’s just extremely intelligent, instead), so consumed with his website idea that despite making facebook about socializing with people, that his last concern in the world is actually having real friends.

It’s interesting to see how Zuckerberg journeys through the entire movie, constantly finding ways to improve facebook, plowing through real-life friends along the way, collecting and adding their ideas to his growing snowball of a website.  I had no idea that Napster creator Sean Parker, cleverly portrayed by Justin Timberlake, at one time played an important part in it all.

A key factor in The Social Network‘s success is its dark and sophisticated tone. It’s not just Trent Reznor’s musical contributions going on in the background.  I can confidently state that the movie can’t be described as “fun” or “trendy”.  It’s not quirky in the ways that made Garden State a comedy as well as a drama.  The Social Network is simply just a drama, but an infectiously interesting one.  I was impressed how they could fit the coolness of an R-rated movie into the limitations of a PG-13 rating.

When the movie ended, I came to terms with the fact there was no real climax or truly resolvable plot… just like facebook.  In the movie, Zuckerberg compares facebook to fashion, in that it never ends.  The Social Network, from start to finish, is an ongoing, constantly evolving entity.  For me, the whole movie was a continual plot line and climax. This offbeat formula captures the idea of facebook so well.

For me to say that The Social Network is the movie of the year is to say that it’s better than Inception.  So just to be clear, for me, it was better than Inception. My guess is that most people who have seen both movies will disagree with me. But the cultural relevance, perfectly executed acting, and snappy pace of The Social Network kept my mind from ever wandering.  And in age where things like facebook only encourage ADHD behavior, a movie that can keep my attention for a solid two hours and one minute deserves a prize for that alone.

Ethnic Backgrounds of the Main Cast