Welcome, please take off your shoes and make yourselves at home...

So I've never really considered myself a blogger, but when you think about it, how many times do you have a thought, a story, a joke you just really want to tell someone, but nobody is around? So this seems to be a necessary and useful vehicle, hopefully everyone reading will enjoy the ride.

This initial post will be a bit longer than usual cause there are today is the start of two adventures that I really want to address. First is the birth and maturation of this beautiful blog. And secondly, this morning, as I was finishing the formatting on my own blogging utopia, I received a call from a trading firm I had been interviewing with informing me that they would be extending me an offer.

Now trading (as in trading stocks and whatnot on the exchanges) is what I had wanted to do when I graduated college but I ran into some trouble getting into it. But I was so eager to move to Chicago and just get after it, that I ended up taking a job doing sales with a logistics firm. I really didn't like it and was looking for a way out. Then in December, right before New Years, they informed me and half of my training class (the other half of my training class, with a few exceptions, had already left for multiple reasons) that we were just too awesome and we were being laid off. It was kind of a blessing in disguise, but at the time it was one of the more surreal and difficult things I had ever been through. I wasn't happy there, but I don't think anything can prepare you for being taken into a conference room, being informed that "its in the best interest of both parties to discontinue this relationship", and then leaving the room to find they already cleaned out your desk and had your stuff so you couldn't even go back to your desk. Then you get escorted out of the building...

After a week, you get slapped in the face with the reality of "what am I going to do now?" I mean it was quite a slap, I hadn't been whacked across the face since I used to try to dance with hot sorority girls at Miami. Luckily, I had actually been interviewing with a different company for an outside sales position and had received an offer a few days earlier. But I really was not feeling the company or the position, but now I was jobless so I just took it, cause lucky for me I had a job...or so I thought. A week and a half later I started at the company and after the first day, the realization that I made completely the wrong choice washed over me. So in yet another incredibly difficult and awkward moment, I called my new boss the next morning at 745 and informed him that I would no longer continue with the company.

So that awkwardness behind me, I now had to continue on the job search. Cue the most stressful, boring, and antsy month of my life. My parents, God bless them, were extremely supportive and helpful both emotionally and monetarily. But there was the truth hanging over me that if something didn't come about soon, I may have to leave Chicago and move back to Milwaukee. Talk about humbling and scary. I had spent the last 6 months carving out an identity and place for myself in the city that I had wanted to move to since I was 10, and now I was in danger of losing it all...

But fate smiled upon me with this opportunity. A trading firm, well known for a phenomenal training program, and I got through to the final interview. And as I went through, we parted ways and he let me know that if I received and offer, I would be starting mid March. As if it could not get any better, I have a cruise booked and paid for back in October that leaves the first week of March that I was worried I may not be able to go on due to a new job. But I dodged that bullet as well.

So now more than ever I believe that everything happens for a reason and life is really about riding the storm out. So dear readers, if things are rough right now, hang in there. Like T.I. says... All you can do is handle it, worst thing you can do is panic.

Which brings me to my last point, I want to end every post with a song of the day/moment/etc...
Right now its T.I.-No Matter What. My respect and adoration for T.I. knows no bounds and Paper Trail really is just a CD full of some of the more mature introspection and commentary Ive ever heard in the genre. No Matter What specifically just is kind of oddly inspirational and motivational. If the man can face a year in prison and still be like, no worries, Im gonna be alright, then I can deal with my business.

"Wonder how I can face years and I'm still chillin, easy, let go and let God deal with it..."

JW