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You know what is amazing if you think about it; it is how much experience an individual can accumulate over their life. Now, imagine everyone sharing those experiences, but mainly the piece of what happen, what we learned, and how the issue was resolved – think about that. Now I know what you are thinking, we probably could call that social media, blogging, podcasting, writing a book, etc. The truth is that nowadays there is so much information out there, I mean so much, that sometimes that information gets diluted, lost, becomes a grey area, or simply is not true. The good thing is that there is a lot of great information out there and it is up to us to make sure we know what is true and what is not. That brings me back to “Experiences”, and how as a community or neighbors, whether next door or in the next country, we can share these experiences and maybe just maybe something someone says will help someone else.
I have so many vivid memories/experiences and the funny thing is that about 12, maybe 15 years ago I began to write a book about my life experiences, but back then publication was not that simple and I left the idea on the back burner. Now with social media such as blogging, podcasts, or other multitude avenues of sharing information; sharing an experience, an idea, or story has become fairly easy. I would like to still pursue that book, and maybe I will pick up where I left off.
I remember sitting on a horse, I was about 3 maybe 4 years old, and I could see my mother and me just being happy, but of course, there is that memory of my mother and I scrummaging through a dumpster from the back of a Safeway looking for food. We have all had our share of good and bad experiences, and I believe both kinds of experiences are good in building the foundation of the type of person you might or will become.
There was another time I recall where I was water skiing. The water was calm and a beautiful blue, and maybe there were a few clouds in the sky, but I could see my mom on the boat cheering me on – so happy; then there is the memory of my mother laying on the bed so thin, and her eyes seemed lost. If you looked closely enough, she looked sad, as though she was not done yet, but at the same time, she knew she had no choice but to move on. I remember my first business opportunity, it came from those famous infomercials on TV; Don Lapre – where you place tiny ads in newspapers and make money; of course, the memory of me sleeping in my car, somewhere tucked in between two industrial buildings, trying to keep the cold out. I look back at my experiences, and as a child there really is not much we can do, our life is out of our hands and we count on our parents or adults to guide us through until we are old enough to do it ourselves. But for many of us move into adulthood happens much sooner than others and I believe that those having to move into adulthood sooner, experience life quite differently.
I remember buying my first vending machine route, it was so – what is the word – amazing. I felt like a different person, like I should be receiving a gold medal or something, then comes the memory of dropping out of college, and working 12–14-hour days just to be able to pay rent, eat, pay utilities; it felt like I was stripped from my gold medal and started to live paycheck to paycheck. The vending machine business was good, but not good enough to live on. I don’t mean that living to paycheck is a totally bad thing, many people I know don’t mind, they don’t like change too much and are happy just as they are. But of course, there are those that well, we simply want more in life, maybe not so much material things, but being able to live comfortably and not worry about ordering cheese on that burger and costing $1.50 more and then stressing about it. From the first breath we take to the last, our experiences teach us something, whether it is crying after a fall and getting a hug from our parents to working on a project at work and getting recognized as doing it efficiently. Whether an application, software, app, or plugin was used to complete the project efficiently, or whatever was done to complete the project efficiently will remain in your mind for future projects; this is an experience you learned, now imagine sharing that with others. We don’t always know how to approach a new experience and if you don’t have someone or somewhere to help you, then we learn on the spot.
So, if one person has experienced so much, multiply that by millions. This mass accumulation of experience would be or is phenomenal and yes, we can for the most part find these on the Internet. What I am trying to say is, for all those bloggers, podcaster, social media influencer that are sharing what they learned, “Thank you”. I think I will continue to share my experiences, and talk about how I approached each experience and what the outcome was, or maybe just do a lot of babbling. As for what I shared above it was simply life teaching me, and for the time I had to go through a dumpster looking for food, the supervisor came out and offered my mom a job. When the time came to say goodbye to my mom, I simply did, and cried for days, which was followed by me sleeping in my car (I was all alone), but during that time I found the opportunity to work at a large company and increased my income – and moved on. As for the 12–14-hour days, I was able to reduce those hours because I began one of my first business ventures besides my vending machine route that involved the Internet. The internet was fairly new, Amazon was fairly new, and as an Amazon associate, I began my journey. The money is nothing to write home about; the little I do make I invest in stocks, mutual funds, ETF, crypto currency, and other things, but I know there are more opportunities out there and I want a piece of it – as many of us do as well. In the meantime, I will continue with my blog, share as much as I can, and hope that one of my posts brings information, happiness, a solution, options, a sense of belonging, or whatever the post brings – hopefully positive things preferably – I am sure I won’t make everyone happy.
Thank you once again for stopping by and I leave you with this thought, “Life tends to throw at us a whole lot, so whether you make it or don’t through each experience, it is ok because what you learned becomes part of your Arsenal, for other of Life Experiences that come your way”.