In the middle of August 2002, I made a life-changing decision in five minutes, that made me who I am today. I was driving through Virginia I think, with my girlfriend at the time, on our way back to South Carolina from Maine. I had just moved to South Carolina from Indiana the beginning of August, and we were going to get married. Now, here we are, after postponing the wedding at the last minute, on a road trip, and she says “I think we should break up.” And goes to sleep.

This is the biggest “Oh shit” moment I’d ever had in my life. I had quit my job in Indiana, moved 10 hours away, had been made to feel like I had wasted the last 3 years of my life at a job, because of how my boss had treated me at the end, had my fiancée delay the wedding, and was at the lowest point of my life, trying to find a place to live in a strange state, put my life together, and find a job. Now we go from delaying to breaking it all off.

I was faced with a three options. #1, I could stay in Columbia, South Carolina. I was on the verge of signing a lease, but didn’t have a job lined up, and really no leads. I knew 3 people, the other 2 through my ex. So this wasn’t very appealing.

#2 I could move back to my home town. I had just left there, and to be honest, felt like a failure after the last couple weeks. On top of that, I didn’t really like my old boss at the time, and wanted to avoid this. Prior to moving with my girlfriend when she moved for school, I had realized that I had grown as much as a person as I would in Bloomington, Indiana. Therefore, I was reaching a point where I was already contemplating a move.

#3 I could move somewhere else. This was the most appealing option. But where am I going to move? In the course of five minutes, I decided to move to Columbus, Ohio. I decided I was going to move there, because I had 10 good friends, knew the city somewhat, and liked it. I had gone to school at the University of Dayton, an hour away, so I was going to a “home”. This got me away from the people I least wanted to be around, I could be around people I really liked and would be forced to move forward, grow as a person, and not take a step back.

I called one of my college roommates who was living with another of our friend’s parents in Columbus. I asked him if he knew any place I could stay at while looking for a job and a place to live. He called me back five minutes later and said our friend’s parents said I could stay with them. So that problem was solved. But now, I was facing a huge hurdle. My brother had just brought out all my stuff. So I have to figure out how to get it back across the country, and I had a chevy cavalier. The other problem was, I had $50 to my name, and a $50 mail-in rebate check for something I had bought. I hadn’t worked at this point in almost a month, and was living on my own in a new state.

The next morning, I loaded my car with essentials and embarked on the 10 hour trip. It was a lonely drive and a pretty hard one. It’s a tough point in life to be heart broken, crushed emotionally, jobless, homeless and broke. It was this stretch of life where I really learned how amazing my friends were. I got into my friends’ place that night, and met his parents for the first time. They are awesome and amazing people. Their kids call them Bob and Kath. Everyone hangs out at their house. They were doing some remodeling and redecorating, and left for the weekend. All of our friends who were in the area came to hang out, and paint walls.

Honestly, I can’t believe Bob and Kath trusted all of us alone in their house. I slept in a hammock the whole weekend there were so many people. We played shovel ball in their back yard. It’s like baseball. You make a ball out of duct tape. Then, try to throw it past a batter who is swinging a snow shovel. There’s marks in the yard, if it goes past a point, it’s a single, one for a double, triple, home run. If someone catches it, you’re out. If you miss, it’s a strike. Behind the batter is a bucket on a stick. If the pitch hits that, the batter’s out. To this day, it’s a top five favorite game of mine. I pick out snow shovels based on what one would be the best for shovel ball.

In the two week stretch when I lived there, I was completely surrounded by some of the most amazing people ever. Every new person I met was just hilarious. I honestly think it was the biggest catalyst in helping me get over my ex, because all we did was laugh and goof off.

I got an interview with another friend’s company – a collection’s agency. I got the job. The job sucked major ass, but paid well and best of all, I had it. I found a studio apartment in a semi-ghetto part of the city and borrowed a friend’s truck to move my stuff once I got settled in and had a pay check. I had officially survived a month on about $300, moving halfway across the country, twice.

Gradually, the collections job wore on me. Well, I never enjoyed it. But the worst thing was, there were times where you just sat and stared at your computer and waited for someone to pick up. These times were filled with thinking, and I’d think about everything, and get sad. In the spring, I started dating a girl that I really liked from work. This helped me get over the breakup, but was short-lived, and I spent the next 4 years trying to work things out with her, and handling my emotions poorly.

I eventually couldn’t stand the collections job any more. I was becoming Peter in Office Space. Every day was the worst day of my life. I would start off in a good mood driving to work. The closer I got, the worst I felt. The place sucked my will to live. Eventually, I got forced into a decision by management reading too much into a note they found in the trash can. I said I was in a bad mood. They read it as me complaining about them. They said think it over and let us know in 2 days what you want to do. I put in an application for a pizza delivery job, got an interview and turned in my 2 week notice.

After about a year delivering pizza for the worst pizza hut store in the area, and staying on to try to help make it better, I was still trying to work things out with the work girl. This wasn’t going well.  In the course of handling them poorly, one night I went out drinking and shooting pool. I just wanted to get away from home and forget stuff. I didn’t intend to drink a lot. But I did, and on the way home, hit one of those safety poles in a parking lot – the ones that keep you from hitting a building. My airbags deployed, and I was like “oh shit, not good.” So, I drove home. About a mile down the road, I got pulled over and blew twice the legal limit.

It’s tough to figure out who to call to pick you up from jail at 3 a.m. I looked through my phone and called a guy from work that lived close by. He picked me up, I slept on his couch, and the next morning started to realize how much I’d screwed up. My car was in impound. The front end was wrecked. I could no longer deliver pizza. I didn’t want to tell my family or pretty much anyone what I’d done. On top of that, I was looking at jail time and fines, loss of my license, etc. I was really relieved I hadn’t hurt anyone.

Fortunately, I was managing part-time by this point. So I was able to transition to full-time and keep my job. I called my boss and informed him of my actions and situation. He wasn’t too pleased of course, but helped me look at my options. He also helped me get rides and even gave me rides a couple times. He lived a half hour from work, and I was living 20 minutes away, on an opposite side of town. He was going through a perpetual breakup with his baby’s momma and so the two of us would hang out. In this time, he became a great friend of mine and to this day, he’s a life advisor of mine, someone I run all my major decisions by, and just a fun person to be around.

I had always said that if I was guilty of a crime, I would face the consequences, and not try to find a loophole or other way out of it. So when I went to court, I was determined to do so. I was facing up to six months, $500 fine, loss of my license for at least six months, court costs. Typically it was 7 days in jail for such a high BAC (.017) and the rest suspended. I did a free consultation with a lawyer and he wanted me to fight it. I told him no. I just didn’t want to get screwed with the stiffest fines. So I went to court on my own, planning to just plead guilty, figuring I’d get the standard penalty. However, the bailiff pointed out to me that I was charged with six misdemeanors (all traffic violations though) and I freaked out. I spoke with a public defender and they got a continuance to work things out. We eventually entered a plea of guilty to the DUI and the rest of the charges were dropped. I was sentenced to 7 days in jail – which turned out to be 3 in actual jail and 3 in an alcohol assessment/education program. My license was suspended for six months, and I had to pay $250 in fines + court costs of about $75 iirc. I was relieved. I received work and school privileges and was allowed to drive. . . . . . . with special yellow plates. This was probably my most embarrassing time of life. One day, I held the door open for some people at work. Their 8-year-old pointed at my car and said “look, someone got a DUI!” I just hung my head in shame.

Embarrassment’s not the only thing that comes with those plates. They’re an open invitation to get pulled over by the police. In this six months, I was pulled over probably 8 times. Each time, it was the same. I showed them my “license” (a piece of paper notarized by the court saying I could drive to/from work, with my hours I usually work, and school, with my typical schedule). They’d make sure I wasn’t drunk, and let me go. The last time though, the state trooper advised me I couldn’t drive my car.

My hood latch was broken. So I tied my hood down with rope. The bumper was destroyed, so I cut it off with a saw. You could see my windshield washer fluid reservoir from outside the car. The first day I drove to work, I forgot to tie the hood, and had it bungeed. Kids, don’t EVER TRY THAT. About a mile onto the highway, as I’m merging, my hood flew up and hit the windshield. This was the scariest thing I think that’s ever happened to me. Fortunately, it was pre-rush hour, and the road was empty. I was able to look under the hood and get to safety. I then got the rope from my trunk and tied it down. Fortunately one of the other managers at work is in the military and helped me tie knots every couple weeks. But my windshield was cracked, and my wiper arm broken. So the whole spring, I couldn’t use my wipers. I bought Rain-X and would spray my windshield if it was going to rain.

After my encounter with the state trooper, I bought a car the next day. I’d been looking for one already. My boss’ friend was a car salesman. This worked out well, because, like I said, my license was a piece of paper. I actually had a scan of my license on my computer and printed that and took it with me. He accepted that as my license and I bought the car and am still driving it today.

Fortunately, living 4 hours from my parents has made this easy to hide from them. I’ve never told them about this, or the tattoo on my ass. I just think there’s things that would be better left unsaid. They came to visit me in the spring. I parked my car in my garage (detached of course) and lied to them for one of the only times. I told them my car “needed to get some work done.” So it wasn’t a complete lie. I just didn’t tell them it wasn’t getting worked on at that point.

I was hanging out with my boss more in this stretch. He helped me work through the things I was feeling with the DUI. His friend got one a couple years before. So one night, they came to my place with another friend and we played poker. I’d played some stud and draw as a kid, but hadn’t really ever played. I had watched a couple WPT episodes and Rounders while hanging out with my boss. So I was intrigued. After playing with them a few times, and losing, I was getting hooked, and my boss loaned me Theory of Poker. I found 2+2 and deposited onto Party.

Eventually, we got a new manager to join us at work. We hit it off really well, and I eventually got a place with him and another friend from work (no homo). My boss who was now my friend got super burn out and just stopped showing up at work. That was a fun day when our area manager made me go to his new girlfriend’s place and find out where he was.

“Hey Stephanie (I’ve met her three times at this point), where’s Ryan?”

“He’s at work.”

[awkward pause cause I don’t know what to say] “Um, he’s not.”

He ended up quitting. And my now-roommate became my boss. I actually helped train him. I had learned how to do a lot of stuff that he hadn’t been trained to do. This was a useful experience, because a couple years later, I went to another store to help out a guy who outranked me and was struggling, and I eventually, without formal training, ran that store for a couple months well enough that our area manager later said he regretted giving one of his stores to a different guy instead of me, even though I wasn’t trained to do it/wasn’t looking to do it.

About a month after my boss and our friend got a place, our regional manager found out we were living together (violation of company policy). A week later, I got transferred – to the store 5 minutes from where I had lived for 4 years, all the while driving to the one I worked at, 20 minutes away. Before I’d even been transferred, my roommate got fired over paperwork not being sent in on time.

The point where I knew I was going to transfer, rather than stay where I was at, and sacrifice the 20 minutes extra drive every day, came one night. Three women came in to order food. They walked in the door carrying a check. Don’t ever accept payment when someone has it in their hand when they walk in the door. I was hit with a smell I’d never smelled before. I later googled “what does crack smell like” and the description was the same as what I’d smelled – burnt plastic. They were kind of crazy, and had me a little nervous. I actually snuck out the back door, walked around to the corner of the building, and got their license plate # and put it in my phone with a description of the vehicle. I came back in, told my cook that if anything happened, tell the police about the note in my phone, and then proceeded with getting their order taken care of. That night I knew I needed a new place to work.

I transferred and began the process of picking up some training I needed to promote to assistant manager. About 3 weeks after transferring, I was asked to go to a store that was in bad shape and help. They demoted the general manager to the assistant at the store I was moved to, and I helped stabilize the store until they brought in a new manager. I then stayed on there for six months more, splitting my week between the two. The worst part about this is, the two stores were almost identical. One Saturday night, I closed at one and was putting dishes away. The next morning, I’m at the other store, standing looking in a spot going “WTF I know I just put this utensil here last night.”

Within a month of moving back to the store I was supposed to be at, I was moved again to help at a store where the manager had just been fired, and two managers who were helping fill in were fired for theft. I knew when I went there to help out, even though nobody was saying it, that it was a permanent move. The store I’d been traded to six months before was still fighting for me. And I had another store, this one five minutes from my house, that wanted me too. But I knew they didn’t have the budget for an assistant. I was right, I was promoted to assistant at the store that fired the managers.

The two who hadn’t been fired quit managing immediately – one left the company altogether, the other one just demoted to a driver. They promoted an assistant from another store to general manager, and for the year I worked there, it was just her and I for probably 10 months of that time. We averaged 60 hours/week each. We were salaried for 48.

I reached a point where I didn’t know if I was supposed to be trying to go to sleep, or forcing myself to stay awake. I worked an average of 2 open-close-opens or close-open-closes a week. One day, I couldn’t sleep and finally fell asleep at 6. I set my alarm for 8 so I could go to work at 9. I woke up at 1. There’s no words to describe the feeling when this happens. I grabbed my phone and had 15-20 missed calls and texts. Surprisingly, I didn’t get into trouble over this. But, I did take melatonin for a little bit to try to regulate my sleeping schedule. That doesn’t work well when you have to average 4 hours 3 nights a week.

I had seen my family an average of about once every 8 months. I had spent a holiday with them twice in 6 years. In August, I went to my cousin’s wedding. I couldn’t tell you the names of my cousins’ kids. On the way home, I decided I didn’t want my life to be like this anymore. I went to dinner with Ryan – my ex-boss/life mentor – and we discussed my life. I turned in my notice at work and quit my job at the end of August to deliver pizza part-time and play poker.

Once again, I realized that my life had stagnated. I hadn’t really grown in like a year. They kept talking about promoting me. I didn’t want to run my own store. I was really afraid of falling victim to the Peter Principle if I promoted. I was irreversibly burnt out and reaching a point where I just didn’t care. This isn’t a time to promote. I couldn’t finish school. I couldn’t see my family. I couldn’t grow in poker. I couldn’t meet a girl. I couldn’t get a dog. So I quit.

Sometimes in life, you have to just step out and take that risk. You don’t grow when everything stays safe. You don’t push yourself when you don’t have to. Sometimes, you just have to take a shot and make yourself sink or swim. I’ve always been one of those people who takes on something, and quickly is at a point where you can’t turn back. I’ve left alone on a 12 hour drive at midnight. I’ve taken off my own muffler and had to put on a new one, with little mechanical ability. I’ve decided to move 10 hours away with $100 to my name, and no clue how to move all my stuff.

But these are the times when I can look back and say that I learned that I could do it, and that I have the most amazing friends in the world. I can’t say I’d want to re-live some of these times, but I do know that the next time that I reached a point where I couldn’t take the situation I was in, and had to make a drastic change, I knew I could handle it.