My favorite year was my year #23. That was 11 years ago. On my year #23, I…
- Came back home from China (the first time)
- Broke up with my first long-term girlfriend
- Rented my first apartment
- Purchased my first car
- Quit my first job
- Started a business
- Broke down emotionally and physically from working the third shift in an Amazon distribution center
- Fell asleep while driving and crashed my car
- Depended on the kindness of strangers to go to work and come back home
- Gave rides to strangers that didn’t have a car to go to work and come home
- Depended on friends for a place to live and sleep
- Dealt with deep depression in my family
- Got fired from a job at the end of the holiday season
- Applied for social security benefits and almost applied for food stamps (I should have)
- Disastrously lost my faith
- Miraculously found my faith again
- Studied for the GRE
- Took the GRE
- Got an ‘ok’ score on the GRE
- Applied to a masters program
- Experienced hairloss-triggering levels of stress and anxiety
- Had constant episodes of night terrors
- Packed everything I owned into my car and drove away from everything when I decided to move my life forward.
23 was a good year — I was 18 when I started it and 50 by the time I was 24.
