What paths we take

I've been reminiscing lately as to how I got where I am. In full detail it would take more than few volumes to describe, but if I just stick to employment (which is what I have been occupied with lately) it is pretty concise. I started working when I was 14. If your worried about that being too young, don't worry, it was just doing cleaning for my father's business. I cleaned through jr high and high school, until the business got so big that my father finally had to let us go and hire professional cleaners. At that point, I found my self 18 and unemployed with the whole world of opportunity in front of me. So naturally, I took the first opportunity I could find as a Cutco knife salesman.

I was horrible. I think I had one large order over the four months I was employed with them. I probably spent more on gas than I got back from them. Still, it helped me get over my fears of meeting new people and I did get a really nice set of knives from it (which I still today). After that summer, I started college and was again finding myself in search of employment. Hence began my call center phase as I call it.

Minus a two year mission in Japan, this phase lasted 3 years and covered 3 companies. DirecTV, 1800Contacts, and a surveying company. There are a lot of better things I can think of than phone work, but it was bringing in the money. I had enough that I was able to get an engagement ring for my wife and support us through our first year of marriage. After that, I was ready to stop talking to all the stupid people who call in and try some manual labor.

Over the next 2 years, I tried a short stint with a thrift store (sorting and fixing donations). This wasn't all that bad, but the environment just wasn't what I was looking for, so I then moved onto a creamery. This was actually a pretty fun job. I was the ice cream guy, so I had to set up the pumps and pipes when they were making the ice cream, and I got to pull it all down and clean it when they were done. This was by far the most physically intensive job I have ever had. Everyday when I was finished I was drenched in sweat. I think I lost about 20 pounds during the stint, and I only quit when I got in a car accident (my first and only) that my wife and I though was partly due to how tired I was from school and work. After that I went back to my Dad's company and helped do laundry with my wife. We also had moved into my parents house, so money wasn't that big of an issue and I was able to concentrate on school for a few semesters.

This all came to a halt when my wife got pregnant. Realizing that I had a family to support now, I called in a favor from a friend and got my first computer related job as a web developer. This was great. I was making money doing something I enjoy, and gaining invaluable experience in the process. I was only doing basic HTML and JavaScript, but during the year I worked there I managed to get in on some more involved projects and picked up php and coldFusion as a result. This combined with my schooling in Computer Engineering landed me my current job as a real programmer for a small start up company. Finally my skills were put to good use. I was learning anything and everything that had to do with my position and actually still did a lot of web development for the company as well. It has been about a year now, and I think it's precisely because of my experience here that I was able to get an offer from Amazon.

Things are looking good. There are only three weeks until we leave for Seattle, but we can hardly wait. Who would have thought that a knife salesman would end up doing engineering for Amazon.com. That's the beauty of education and determination. With a little bit of good luck and hard work, you can get the opportunities you're looking for and live life how you want. Life is good.