Understanding My Past

I started writing this blog a couple of weeks ago. It originally started with me having somewhat of a quarterlife crisis. In an attempt to understand why I was feeling the way I did, I started writing about my past. It snowballed from being just about certain parts of my past to me basically writing about what I feel is the chronological meat and potatoes of my life so far. There are certainly things that I have not mentioned and probably things that I could ellaborate more on, but I feel this is a basic overview of my life so far. This writing has been an interesting journey for me and I have made some connections between the then and the now that I never realized before. If you decide to read this post, brace yourself, because it is quite long.

THE FIRST 5 YEARS OF LIFE
I suppose I would have to say that I did quite well in the first 5 years of my life. I learned to speak the English language. I became accustomed to the world around me and began my decent in social interaction with other people besides my family. This is really all I could hope to come out of my first 5 years, and I must say I pulled it off quite well. I am certainly satisfied with all my choices during this time (probably because I cannot remember them).

SCHOOL YEARS (GRADE SCHOOL)
I have known for a long time that I am perfectionist when it comes to a lot of things. I am my own worst enemy and harshest critic. If I have not done something perfectly, then I have not done it to the best of my ability, therefore I cannot be satisfied with the results regardless of what those results are [This is a terrible thought and it is something that have I struggled with for a long time in my life. I know this thought is unhealthy, but it part of me in a lot of ways and is very difficult to part with]. For many years now I have known that these perfectionist thoughts started very early on in my life, however, it was not until I had a conversation with my mom about my schooling did it become apparent to me just how early I developed this self defeating pattern.

Apparently, even as early on as 1st grade did I have predetermined thoughts about how well I should perform my studies. In my first grade reading program, I found it quite difficult to learn everything that was required of me. There was so much information given in such short periods of time that I formed the belief that I was not good at reading at all. I, therefore, grew a bitter hatred of reading then and there because in my perfectionist mind: if I cannot do it perfectly then I am a failure. I cannot remember any of this, but it makes perfect sense to me now. I never enjoyed reading throughout my school days. In fact, it is only recently in my life that I have come to find that reading can bring enjoyment into my life. I owe that realization to J.K. Rowling. And so, it is in these early years of my life (or perhaps even earlier) that I developed my thoughts and predetermined beliefs that led to me being a perfectionist at heart. These perfectionist thoughts would be the focus of my life during these years. Most of my thoughts revolved around school and the work I needed to do for it. I knew, even at these young ages, that I needed to do extremely well in school so that I could get into a good college and then get a wonderful, high paying, job. At that point in my life, that was all I could see at the end of the tunnel. I knew I had to go to college and I knew that I had to do everything perfect in order to get there so that I could get the job that I wanted (even though I did not know what job that was). This was an enormous weight on my mind day in and day out, even in grade school. Although, at this point in time, the weight was manageable and I was getting As and Bs. I never did get straight As at any point in my school career, much to my dismay.

It was because of these thoughts and beliefs that I had such a difficult social life during these times. I was not like the other kids at school. I was a nerd and I stuck out from the crowd. Ridicule, pestering and laughing is what I had to put up with because of how different I was. It did not bother me that much, but it did lend to me being shy and passive towards other people that I did not know. I was not completely divulge of all friendship, however. I made one very close friend, Daniel, who just happened to be a nerd like me. He was my best friend during these times and I was fortunate he was there. It was 6th grade when I met Alan who would end up playing an important role as best friend during Jr. High and early High School years.

My perfection was not limited to my schooling. During this time I was extremely athletic. In fact, now that I am thinking about it, I can remember as early as 2nd grade being absolutely determined to be the best at every sport I ever played. I always had to be the fasted kid on the playground, and at that time, I was. Anything I was not the best at, I would not play if I could avoid it; tether-ball being the main example of this. Why did I need to be the best? It all stems back to my perfectionist nature. I wanted to impress anyone and everyone. I needed to prove to them that I was the best. I needed to live up to their expectations of me; or at least the perceived expectations that I thought they had of me. Ms. McClure was my Physical Education teacher throughout most of grade school with the exception of forth grade. She was passionate about her job. She wanted all the kids to be fit, healthy and she wanted us to develop exercise habits we took with us into adulthood. Of course, I did not see that motive at the time. I thought she was looking for the fastest, strongest kid in the school and I wanted to prove to her that it was me. All I cared about was impressing her and showing her that I was the best. I remember thinking that she most likely would compare my athletic ability to other students she had taught in previous years. I recall day dreaming about breaking school athletic records and her being so proud of my perfect athletic prowess. It was with these notions and these beliefs that I came back to my elementary school while I was in high school to see Ms. McClure. I became confused and disappointed when I could see in her face that she did not remember me in the slightest.

To sum up these years: I was a nerdy, nearly friendless, extremely athletic kid that thought way to much about my future and how I needed to live up to other peoples perceived and believed expectations of me.

SCHOOL YEARS (JR. HIGH)
Puberty, sexual awakening, dating, drugs, alcohol, confusion, anger, fear pretty much sums up Jr. High for most people, I think. Being the nearly friendless nerdy kid that I was, I experienced it all except for the drugs, alcohol and the dating. Who is going to give a nerdy kid with no friends drugs and alcohol? What Jr. High age girl is going to date a nerdy kid with no friends, a bad dress sense who does not drink alcohol or do drugs?

Early on in Jr. High I had a falling out with my best friend, Daniel. Thankfully, I had met Alan the year prior and he basically took over as the best friend up until high school. Alan, was actually my only friend during Jr. High. After being teased and pestered for so long as a nerd in grade school I learned ways of dealing with those who would think of me as pray. I learned that having a quick wit was a must have in deterring those who had the need to feel superior from thinking of me as a target for them to take advantage of (making them look like a fool and having their friends laugh at them was especially useful). I was constantly on the defensive ready to ward off anyone that would try to put me down in anyway. I learned how to blend in with the crowd nearly to the point of disappearing all together. In doing so, I never made any friends in Jr. High. I ate lunch with Alan and followed him to the basketball courts where he was growing an interest in the sport and decided that he wanted to play. I never was all that great at basketball, but it did not take me long to get good. When I first started playing with Alan and his newly formed friends, I was always the last to get picked for a team. In a matter of weeks I was almost always the first. My athletic ability was still somewhat present, but it started diminishing.

PE in Jr. High was very different from PE in grade school. Ms. McClure was passionate about her job. She cared for her students and wanted them to develop habits that would help us in life. My teachers of PE in Jr. High were the complete opposite. Especially my 7th grade PE teacher. He had absolutely no care for his students and their physical education. All he cared about was getting his paycheck at the end of the day. He did not care how I did in PE. He could have cared less if I was the fastest or the strongest. He showed no sign that he expected any of us to do anything more then stand there. In Jr. High, a period was made up of 50 minutes of time. In PE, the first 10 and the last 10 minutes of the period were to change out of your school clothes and into your PE clothes. After changing into our PE clothes we were to line up in formation and wait for our teacher. There were numerous times that we would wait for our PE teacher for 20 minutes while he was doing who knows what. By the time he finally decided to come and tell us what to do we would only have 10 minutes before it was time to go inside and change. We would end up running a couple laps and then head in. It was truly pathetic and a complete turn around from what I was used to. It took away my drive to be the best when it came to sports and athletics in general, after all I was not expected to be athletic and no one would pay attention even if I were to try so why even bother? I fell out of shape, at least the form of shape I was used to, fairly quickly and I have yet to get it back. Habits and beliefs from these days still exist in me today, however. I am still extremely competitive and hate to lose at anything and sometimes that loss will trigger emotions that it really shouldn't simply because of my old beliefs that if I am not the best, then I am a failure. Nevertheless, my perfectionism, when it came to physical work, was broken. What then about my perfectionism when it came to school work?

School work in Jr. High was, of course, much more difficult then in grade school, and yet the pressure to succeed was increased ever more. I was not the only one thinking about college now; other people started talking about it: e.g. teachers, guidance counselors, parents and even students. This was new to me as normally I was the only one putting pressure on myself to succeed yet now it seemed to be coming from all around. It was becoming ever more difficult to do all my ever increasing work with perfection and stay sane at the same time. One immediate problem began to stem from my disdain for reading. Never before had I been assigned so much reading, and never before did I hate it as much as I did. My hatred of reading from those early days in grade school were still present and were magnified by 10 times when I would attempt to read these boring passages of history text. I would read two pages, stop, and come to find out that I did not retain a single line of anything my eyes had traveled over. This rose a fury in me that I attached to reading, of any kind, for years to come. I was a failure at reading, I knew it, and I hated myself for it. It made me so mad that I could not stand to do it. I stopped reading all together. It was only a matter of time before something bad happened, and it did.

With all of the mounting pressure I felt on myself to succeed and to be perfect, I felt myself slipping in many areas of study with the ever increasing amount of reading that was assigned with the work. I read only what I had to in order to answer the questions required for homework. I learned that by reading the first and the last sentence of every paragraph in text books, typically you could surmise what the author was saying in the parts in between. This relieved me from a lot of anger and frustration, but at the same time I worried for my future and what others would think of my failures.

In the 8th grade, I got my first D. I was devastated. I had a mental breakdown. The pressure to succeed was to much for me to handle and I could not deal with it anymore. I decided that I was not going to go to college and in making that decision I hoped it would lift the huge weight of pressure to succeed that I had been feeling for years. All of the pain and self inflicted torture of my mind was not worth it any longer. Thinking that I had to be perfect all the time and coming to the stunning conclusion that I was not perfect and never will be was difficult for me to accept. Now I was no longer perfect and I had let myself down. I decided to not care for school or my grades any longer. I would do whatever I would need to do at school so that I could get by and I decided that just as soon as I graduated I would no longer willingly put myself through the hell that was school. This decision made me feel an extreme amount of guilt because not only had I let myself down, but I had let everyone down. My parents, teachers and everyone who expected me to turn into this great person who would do wonderful things in life.

How, though, was I going to make a living later on in life if I was not going to go to college? My plan, up until that point had me going to college and then getting a well paying job and living the American dream. What then would I do? I needed to find something that drove me; something that I knew I wanted to do for the rest of my life; something that I had passion for. Once I found that one thing I vowed that I would do everything I could to educate myself about it. I would volunteer my time to get my foot in the door in order to start a career off early. After all, even back then, I knew that experience was worth more than a degree. A degree helps, but nothing will serve you more then knowledge, experience and most of all, connections with the people who are in the business. This was an extremely difficult time in my life. I was used to being number 1. I was used to being the smartest, the fastest and best at whatever I did. Now I was knowingly laying those things down so that I would not have to feel the pain, pressure and anguish that I had every single day up to that point. I knew that this decision was going to profoundly change the course of my life in ways that I could barely comprehend, and it did. My current trek through the world, in a lot of ways, is in direct relation to this very decision I made when I was 13 years old. I am still questing to find that thing that drives me and unleashes passion within.

It was during 8th grade when my only friend at the time, Alan, was diagnosed with bone marrow cancer. The cancer was isolated to his left knee and parts of the bone directly above it. Alan was taken out of school and he had surgery performed to remove the infected bone and knee in order to replace it with a metal counterpart. He underwent chemotherapy to hopefully eradicate any remaining rouge cells left behind. Alan did not return to Jr. High and I had no friends at school.

To sum up these years: I was a nerdy, now almost completely friendless, not so athletic teenager that decided he never again wanted to set foot in a school classroom if he could avoid it.

SCHOOL YEARS (HIGH SCHOOL)
The first couple months of high school was quite odd as I had no friends at school. My only friend at the time, Alan, was still out of school and in bed recovering from his surgery and chemotherapy. I continued to be his friend seeing him on Sundays, normally. That did not change the fact that I felt completely lonely and scared while I was at school. Alan did return my freshman year in high school and I was quite relieved. Finally, I had someone to eat lunch with and I could feel like I belonged somewhere. It did not take long for Alan to begin making other friends at high school which would turn into a real problem for me later. I, on the other hand, was not making any more friends in high school or otherwise, except on the computer in cyberspace.

It was during this time in my freshman year that I began talking in chat rooms on the internet. It was a way for me to express myself in ways that I could not in the real world. I would pick fights with people online and use it as a form of aggression release. It was a way for me to express all the pent-up emotion that I had build up throughout the day at school and at home. I developed many more online friends then I had ever had in the real world. I felt closer to some of these people then I did to anyone else at and time, and yet these were people who lived thousands of miles away.

With regards to school work: During this time the other students around me were constantly becoming more and more dedicated to their studies and their work. Talk of getting into good colleges was all over the high school campus and more and more students were coming to the realization that if they did not do good in their studies now, they would not be able to get into the college of their choice. Students would join study groups and get higher then 4.0 GPAs because of all the extra credit work they did. Students were enrolled in Honors and AP study classes. All the while, I watched as more and more of my peers became wonderful model school going children and I began to feel more and more guilty for the direction that I was headed. This guilt turned into anger and hatred towards school and education in general. I hated the students for making me feel the way that I did and I resented every minute of time that I had to be at school. I felt like I was wasting my time doing the very bare minimum of work that I had to in order to scrape by and all the while trying to be okay with the choice that I had made the previous year. These feelings of anger and hatred led to me never making any more friends at school. People did not want to get to know me and I hated all of them because of the way they made me feel about myself and because I associated them with my hatred of school. I was unhappy and did not want to be there and I am sure people could see that in me. I felt the four years of high school were going to be an utter waste of time for me. I was not going to get anything out of it and I looked forward to the day I could leave it all behind and never have to think about school again.

I remember coming home from school and being completely upset and angry at life and the educational system I lived in. I hated going to school and, most of all, I hated that once I got home from school, I would not be able to escape it because of the homework that I had to finish in order to get by. I never did any of the reading that was ever required of me. I learned that when it came to classes like English where you had to prove your knowledge of writing by writing, it was never really about writing something for the teacher that they already knew with regards to a subject or body of work, but I could get a good grade if I understood how my teacher thought and tailored what I wrote to them rather than simply writing bland text that answered the questions. I would almost always take extreme views when analyzing characters or themes and I would try to tie them all together in some weird or exciting way. It never mattered if my theories were right or wrong, only that I made them. This method I found worked about 90% of the time and I almost always got As on my writing assignments. This is really where I developed my ability to write things that are interesting for others to read. It was born out of necessity. I had to write well, or I would have needed to read the texts that were assigned to me. Since, at this time, I was in the chat rooms learning to type, I started doing my writing assignments on the computer rather then hand writing them. It was during this time in my freshman and sophomore years of high school that I learned to type quite fast and accurately. I believe it was all of this that directly relates to why I now enjoy typing up the blogs that I make as I travel.

During my sophomore year of high school my friendship with Alan began growing more distant. He was becoming friends with more and more people and wanted to do things at lunch that I really did not care to do. Since I had no other friends and would feel completely lost without him, I tagged along with him where ever he went. Alan is Chinese and speaks Mandarin. Soon he began hanging out with a bunch of other kids that also spoke Mandarin. He started having lunch with these friends and I would tag along. They would mostly talk in Mandarin, which I, of course, could not understand. I became an outcast of the group and could not relate to any of them except for Alan. I believe, though, Alan began to resent my tagging along with him and his new friends. I could not stand the thought of not hanging out with Alan and his friends, however, because without them I would have been completely alone and friendless. This continued into my Junior year.

Through these first two years of high school I was constantly thinking about what it was that I was going to do with the rest of my life. I was constantly thinking about what profession I was going to sink my effort into early so that I could start off a wonderful career. It was near the end of my sophomore year that I recall coming to the decision that becoming a Police Officer was a good choice for me. I knew that I enjoyed helping people and trying to make other people's lives better. I thought that there would be no better way to do this then to be a cop. My mother set me up to interview a husband of a friend of hers who happened to be a retired police officer so that I could ask him about the profession. It was through him that I learned about the Police Explorer program. Police Explorers is a volunteer program for young adults between the ages of 14-21 who have an interest in law enforcement. I was 15 when I put in my application and joined the Fremont Police Explorers in June of 1999 between my sophomore and junior years of high school.

This was it; this was my big opportunity to start my career off early, and I was going to do it right. I dedicated myself to the program. I learned anything and everything I could about the police department and made it my goal to be the best police explorer I could be so that by the time I was done with the program I would be ready to join a police department even though I did not have a college degree. I volunteered as much as I could. Anytime we were scheduled to do an event, I tried to be one of the people who was there. There were some weeks that I would be down at the police department doing something every day. I became very good friends with a lot of my other peers in the program and it became the one thing that I truly enjoyed doing in life at that time. The program was wonderful for me. It helped me to become a confident person and break my routine of being shy in all situations. I gained huge amounts of self-esteem and self-worth and began to feel good about myself as a person. I began to have hope for the future and for my career.

My junior year of high school was all about police explorers; nothing else really mattered to me. It was what I looked forward to every day. There were numerous times that I would not do homework so that I could go conduct traffic control at some fire that had broken out in the city or to participate in some other last minute event that needed people. I would always drop whatever it was I was doing so that I could go and volunteer at the program. At school, I still did not have any friends besides Alan. The friends that I had made, and were to make, through the explorer program never went to my school. I continued to hang out with Alan at lunch with his other friends so that I could feel somewhat normal, but I began to feel resentful towards him because of how his other friends treated me and how he seemed to not care. Since I was concentrating all of my time outside of school on explorers, I did not see very much of Alan except at school during this time.

When senior year rolled around I had learned to drive and had my driver's permit. I could not drive other people, but I could drive myself. I would drive to school and at lunch I would take my car to McDonald's to eat. It became my routine to eat there because of how inexpensive I could buy a meal that would fill me up. I got $15 a week allowance and needed to make every last penny stretch out towards the end of the week. McDonald's was my answer. I would always go to the drive-thru and typically be one of the first people there. I would buy my lunch and drive back to campus where I would eat in my car by myself. This way I did not feel awkward because it was just me in my own car listening to the radio and no one would really ever know just how alone I was.

Senior year of high school you are only required to take two classes: Econ/Government and English. The other 4 class periods were electives. In keeping with my "do as little as I need to get by" mode of school, I took classes I knew were going to be fairly easy and had little homework, but also ones that I had a vague interest in. I elected to take Psychology, Sociology, Photography and I became the office TA (talk about an easy A). I believe it was during my senior year when I realised that I did not want to become a police officer. I learned that being a cop is an extremely unforgiving career. Most people of the community that you are there to protect dislike you and most of the time the officer ends up having a huge dislike for the general populous as well. I believe this all stems from negative reinforcement. 99% of the time an officer is contacting someone it is because they have done something wrong and the officer needs to correct their behaviour. Most of the time officers are dealing with the same small percentage of criminals over and over again. In my experience I found there are typically two kinds of cops: The ones that can deal with all the negativity of the world that they face on a constant basis, and there are those that can't. The ones that can often develop what can only be described as a salty sense of humor as they learn to cope with all the negative energy of their job. The ones that cannot deal with the negativity end up being the cops you read about in the news and see on video beating the senseless crap out of people. These are the officers that cannot deal with the realities and hardships of their job and most of the time they end of taking it out on everyone around them. These are the officers that take a guy to jail for beating his wife and then goes home the same day to beat his own wife. I learned that if I did become a cop that I would be in a constant struggle to not be that officer. I was already a negative sort of person without all the terrible things that officers have to see and deal with on a constant basis. I learned that the job was not for me. Police explorers was a completely different matter though. I loved the program and I decided that I was going to stick with it even though I knew that I was not going to be a police officer.

I graduated high school when I was 17. It is my philosophy that the entire point of school is to teach a child the tools they need to be able to teach themselves. Did I get those tools during my school career? I would have to say no, but I could not have been happier to have finally gotten out of school and I made it through with mostly As and Bs even though I never really read a single thing. That summer I turned 18 and got a job working for the front desk of the Fremont Police Department. It turned out to be the greatest paying job I have ever had up to this point in time.

To sum up these years: I hated school with a passion, but my life changed forever when I got involved with the police explorers. I gained wonderful friends and an understanding about work, people and life that I still carry with me today.

JR. COLLEGE and WORK

After graduating, I was looking forward to not going to school ever again. This thought did not last very long, though, as my parents made clear to me that in order to be covered under their health insurance I was going to have to be enrolled in school. This made me quite upset, but I did it anyway. I figured I did not know what I was going to do for a career now, so I should take some classes that I thought were interesting and maybe something would pop out. I enrolled at Ohlone Jr. College, but did not declare a major. My first semester there I took 9 units, but it was made clear to me again by my parents that in order to be covered under their health insurance I had to be a full time student which meant 12 units. This, again, made me quite upset, but the next semester I took a full twelve units. I took classes about child development, philosophy, a lot of art, and even English and a math class to fill up some units because I did not know what else to take. It was in one of my art classes, 2D design, that I met Irene. I did not know it at the time, but I had just met the girl that I would fall in love with. Throughout these times in school I just knew her as a friend, and we did not share time together outside of school.

During this time I was still volunteering heavily at the Fremont Police Department. By this time I was one of the more senior people in the program and began taking charge of running the explorer program rather than just volunteering. This was a task I was very glad to have as I loved the program and the people. Even though I knew I did not want to be a cop, my love the for explorer program never died. In fact, as I started gaining more and more responsibility with the program, the more I loved it and wanted to stay.

My life, at this point, basically consisted of me spending most of my time at the Police Department. If I was not volunteering my time there, then I was working the front desk or I was off doing what minimum school work I had to in order to still have some health insurance via my parents coverage. School was still very much a thorn in my side and I wanted to get rid of it. I did not feel like I was getting anywhere with the classes I was taking and I felt it was a waste of my time. The problem was, if I was not going to be going to school then I was going to need to provide my own health insurance. The front desk job was part time only and unfortunately that meant that we did not get benefits. Had the front desk provided benefits, I would have stayed there much longer because I loved it so much; as it was though, they did not.

When I was 19 I dropped out of college and got a full time job working security at the Marriott hotel in Santa Clara, California. Since it was a full time job, that meant that I was not going to have time to do my part time job at the front desk of the police department any longer so I was forced to quit it. I loved working the front desk; it was trying and difficult at times, but I loved the people and I was constantly learning something new every single day. The one thing that I was determined to keep in my life was the explorer post; it was all I cared about and I was determined to stay an explorer even if it meant interfering with my paid work. I absolutely hated working for the Marriott and I especially hated the mentality of the business. Everything at the Marriott revolved around money. I do not know of a single person that worked at that place because they enjoyed their job. If any of us who worked there had a choice, we would have not come into work. It was terribly depressing and I hated every minute of it. I still had the police explorers, though. It was the one thing that kept me going. My life revolved around it and still I gained more and more responsibility as time progressed.

It was while I was working at the Marriott that I had my first relationship and girlfriend. Her name was Shannon. Our relationship lasted about 2 months, but ended just fine. We both knew we were not right for each other and parted ways. It was not long after Shannon that I entered into another relationship that lasted again for about another two months. Her name was Jaime and this one did not end as well as the first. Near the same time that I broke up with Jamie I was looking for a new job. From day one of working for the Marriott I was day dreaming about when the last day would come. It finally did and in May of 2004 I went to work for the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit District) Police Department. Even though I knew that I did not want to become a police officer, with all of my explorer experience, it was the field where I could get the best paying job.

Working for BART was not as terrible as working for the Marriott, but it was still pretty bad. I did not enjoy going to work--I was learning nothing new and my work was never appreciated by the other police department employees. My job basically consisted of writing parking citations all day long. In fact, most of the police officers would have cared less if we Community Service Officers were to all be fired, but we generate income for the district and we also provided a uniform presence in this post 9-11 world. It did not take long for me to tire of my new job as I mastered it fairly quickly. Through it all though, I still had the police explorers. I figured that I was making great money working for BART and I had wonderful benefits. I would work for BART until I was done with the Police Explorers then I would figure something else out.

After I turned 21 I could no longer stay in the police explorer program. I was forced to leave in January of 2005. It was around this time that I met Janae and had my first long term relationship. I learned a great deal from my relationship with Janae. At some point about halfway into the relationship I realised that she was not right for me, but I was unwilling to admit that to myself. This created a lot of problems between her and I and I finally ended our relationship, although not really on those terms. It was during my relationship with Janae that I decided that I was for sure going to go on some travels around the world. This trip would serve as purpose to broaden my horizons and expand my knowledge and understanding of me and who I am.

To sum up this time: This saw the end of my time as a police explorer and also served as a time for my development of serious relationships with the opposite sex. I learned that I could not stand to work a job whose sole purpose is to make money.

THE TRIP

I started putting some serious thought into my travels while I was still with Janae and after I broke up with her things started moving positively in that direction. One thing held me back though, and that was a lack of money. I had saved up a decent amount of money but in order for me to feel comfortable traveling around the world spending thousands and making nothing I felt I needed a little bit more. I was ready to quit BART any day to take up my travels around the world, but by this time I was no longer writing parking tickets. I was working on an inside job in the Personnel and Training Unit of the BART Police Department. I ended up befriending Officer Michael Davis whom I worked very closely with in the office and he was set to retire in June of 2007. Working with Mike in the office was much more bearable then writing worthless parking tickets all day long in a thankless job. I decided that I would work along with Mike until he retired and then I would leave BART and set out for my travels.

It was near the end of my work at BART that I happened to find Irene, the girl I met years earlier while going to Ohlone Jr. College, online via the social website Myspace. I sent Irene a message and not to long after that we met up and went on a bike ride together. Irene and I started spending a lot of time together. It came to the point for me that all I ever wanted to do was spend my time with her. I did not care what else was going on in my life as long as I got to see her. I took a leave of absence from my work at BART and I got to spend most of my waking hours with Irene. Somewhere along the way of spending all that time with her, I fell in love with her. Love has always been a difficult thing for me and I always thought that finding love would be a struggle in my life. Irene has put all those thoughts and fears out of my mind as I now know and understand exactly what being in love means.

I sit here now on my trip looking back to the past, trying to understand where I have come from so that hopefully I can then figure out where I am going in the future. I wish this trip were just about me exploring the world and experiencing new and different people and places. More and more, however, I feel a huge weight of pressure to find my calling and passion in life. I feel it so much so, that I am having a hard time enjoying the moments that I am in. I feel like I have a lot riding on this trip and I feel like I have so much to do and learn.