History is not a linear progression. History is complicated, an interwoven mass of events that may lead in some direction or not. I would like to think that the events of this decade helped me to prepare for the '20s, but only time will tell. Maybe when I am writing a follow up post at the twilight of the 2020s, I will see how the 2010s played their part. But for now, here is what I experienced:
2010
It seems surreal, but I was still in high school at the advent of this decade. It was my last semester at Bishop Carroll and it was event filled. I was "dating" someone when this decade began. It didn't last. The highlight of the waning months of high school for me was capturing a state championship in Scholar's Bowl, in exceedingly dramatic fashion I might add.
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| My sister Felicia, myself, my mother, and my brother Dominic at my high school graduation |
Then came graduation. I got a summer job afterwards and began what would be a long college career, starting at a local community college learning Spanish. Still though, even though I did not know where my future lay, I was brimming with optimism as any 18 year old might. Summer passed into Fall, where I learned that I loved pumpkin spiced coffee, often sipping one as I drove to Andover to take classes at Butler. I got a job at Walmart, starting on a path that would have profound effect on this entire decade. I was still in contact with my high school friends and it was with them that I began...
2011
I continued my directionless path as this year opened. I discovered that I loved classical music, a trait I found in a music appreciation class I used to satisfy a Humanities elective. The coldest temperature I have ever directly experienced, -17 Fahrenheit, occurred in February of that year. Around Easter, I felt a change. I had a particularly moving experience during the Holy Week masses of that year and decided I wanted to try my hand at something that I had intermittently pondered during my teenage years. I tried to join the seminary.
May brought my first real hard time. I was interviewing for the seminary and actually got a job that summer with the cemeteries of the Wichita diocese. Everything seemed to be going great until Thursday, May 19th. That's when it all broke down. That's when a customer of mine at Walmart told me that one of my classmates from high school, Kathleen Duling, had died. Two days later, I found out I would not be going to seminary after all. Two weeks after that, Philip Green, someone who I played football with in high school, had drowned.
2011 was a bitter, long summer. It proved to be the hottest in Wichita history, setting a record with 53 days of 100 degree heat. Three time it got to 111 degrees, which is my personal heat record. Ironically, the first time the thermometer struck 111 happened to be exactly five months to the day that my cold record of -17 had been established. During this hellish heat, I was working at the cemeteries still, even though I would not be going to the seminary. I also worked Walmart the whole time as well. Even though it was a difficult time, I was able to pay off my first car more than a year early because of my work that summer.
Fall arrived and I continued at Butler. By now I was rapidly approaching the end of my community college career and I had decisions to make. I applied for and was accepted into the University of Kansas, but I did not feel that was really practical. At the time, I desired a combination of history and political science. I'm not sure what I ever intended to do with those, but they were what fascinated me most at the time. Regardless, I was looking forward to this miserable year ending and counted down the start of...
2012
by the minute from ten weeks out. I opened this year with fewer friends, but I was still overjoyed to leave the miseries of 2011 behind me.
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| Two of my old high school classmates, Kristen, Jean-Marc, and I on New Year 2012 |
I finished my last semester at Butler, getting a rather milquetoast Associate's Degree in Liberal Arts and Sciences. It was kind of a catchall degree that said I did my general education requirements. I did get top notch grades the entire time I was there, even with the troubles that 2011 brought. I would bring that high GPA to Wichita State, where I did pursue a history degree.
2012 did bring an important change to my appearance. Since high school I had been rather fastidious with my appearance, maintaining a clean shaven look. For Lent of that year, I vowed not to shave. I completed that and decided I actually liked having facial hair. A month after Easter, I decided to grow out my goatee. It has been a permanent feature ever since.
I started that Fall at Wichita State, taking history and literature courses. I maybe had an idea of doing postgraduate work in History. I certainly had the intellectual capacity to do so. But, I was never really committed to it and plans often get derailed by outside forces.
My outside force was named Savannah.
As 2012 began to wane I still had not been in a serious long term relationship. It was not for a lack of trying; it just had never worked out in my favor. I was introduced to Savannah through a friend of a friend and we began dating seriously. It was my first real relationship. How could I not be excited for something I had sought after for so long?
2013
Savannah and I did not have a good relationship. I still wonder to this day why I let it go on for so long. I broke up with her after eight months. Honestly, I had an opportunity to do it after four months and I didn't break things off then. Why? At this point it doesn't matter. It is what it is and this relationship is long buried in the past.
From the outset, Savannah did not like my family and connived to pry me from them. To my shame, I almost let her get away with it. She tried to convince me to go to Emporia State with her. I was not enthusiastic about the idea. Her next ploy was the University of Kansas. I had passed on the idea a year before because if I was going to get a History degree, I could have just as easily done it at Wichita State. But Kansas had something that Wichita State did not: Meteorology.
It had been true that I had always been interested in the weather. The first serious weather event I remember happened on Monday, May 3rd, 1999 when I was 7 years old. I had even asked a meteorologist how to get a degree in the field before I was 10. But it had never been something I had thought about in high school or the early part of college. But my interest in the weather provided Savannah an opportunity and she tried to seize it.
That summer, I moved onto her family's farm, though not directly in with her, but instead in a converted shed. I transferred from my original Walmart to one in Lawrence. I abandoned Wichita with barely any warning. And then Savannah decided she didn't want me anymore. It made things much simpler when I finally broke up with her in August just as I was about to start at KU. I moved to Lawrence and tried to put Savannah behind me.
It didn't work. I was not ready for being out on my own like that. I struggled mightily that first semester at KU, with finances, with grades, with everything. I even tried to self publish a book I had written in hopes of making a quick book and that flopped badly. I abandoned meteorology pretty quickly when I failed Calculus I and went back to History for the Spring of...
2014
If I thought that I would recover doing something I was more familiar with, I was mistaken. I had a hard time that spring as I had the fall prior, even with subjects I was more intimately familiar with than meteorology. I was a categorical mess that whole semester. I decided to move back to Wichita fairly quickly in the semester, starting back up at Wichita State doing who knows what. But at least I would be home.
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| Easter 2014 with the siblings and cousins |
I was at my lowest point in the early part of 2014. I turned 22 that Spring, an age once where I had thought I would get married after having completed a degree. I honest to God cried when my birthday arrived because at the time I had no plan for my future, be it in a career or relationship and I seemingly had no hope for my future.
On top of all of this, I was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder that Spring. Finally, the truth was laid bare, why I had always felt different from everyone else around me, why I was delayed in social maturity, why I was so good at math. Even though the technical definition of autism refers to it as a disorder, I still, to this day, refuse to admit I have a disorder. I have autism yes, but I can still function as an independent adult.
I came home in May. I went back to my original Walmart and took on my responsibilities than a normal cashier as time progressed. In the wake of my relationship with Savannah, I tried to date seriously again. I went on a date or two and even had a quasi-serious relationship in the fall of 2014. But the damage that Savannah had done was deep and needed more time to heal. I abandoned the idea of dating as...
2015
began. I focused on getting my affairs in order, working three jobs to build up some money, which I promptly used on a down payment for a new car when my old one broke down for the last time. During the spring, I finally made a decision that I had been pondering for months: that I would back to meteorology. This time, I would do it on my own schedule and for my own reasons, not because I was pushed into it.
As it turned out while I was hashing out the details of my return to KU, I discovered that I only need three classes to get a History degree with a Political Science minor. I was planning to do some of the general education requirements for meteorology at Wichita State anyway, so I decided to finish up the History degree.
That summer, I took the class that contributed to my failure the first time: Calculus I. This time, I got a B+. It was such a relief to know that I could do it after all. I was also promoted at Walmart that summer to a cashier supervisor. Everything was looking up as 2015 continued and I felt that when I got up to Lawrence, I would resume actively looking for someone to be with and hopefully marry.
Fall 2015 was my best semester in years, other than a bout of pneumonia. I graduated on December 10th and prepared to move as...
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| My stepdad Tim, myself, and my mother at my graduation from Wichita State |
2016
started. I moved back up to Lawrence and short order but did not transfer to the Walmart right away. The person in charge of that in Lawrence had told me to my face that there were positions available I could transfer into, but when I actually tried to do it, she balked and said I could not transfer at that time. She strung me along for three months before I got fed up with waiting and got a different job at the Home Depot. Five and a half years of loyal work meant nothing in the end.
In the meantime, I started at KU and definitely bit off more than I could chew. I tried to do 18 credit hours that first semester, with the intent of graduating in two years. I got through it, barely.
The day before I left to go back to Wichita for Spring Break, I met one Ashley Thomas on an online dating site called Plenty of Fish. We chatted the whole week while I was in Wichita and agreed to meet when I got back to Lawrence. We hit it off right away and developed into a close relationship.
That summer, I continued going hard on school, and switched from the Home Depot to Hobby Lobby. Fall arrived and I started struggling again. I was dealing with the most difficult coursework I had ever experienced and I was rapidly approaching burnout because I had not had more than a month away from school in over two years. I found out I would not be staying at Hobby Lobby and when the calendar flipped over to...
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| Ashley and I's first Christmas together |
2017
I got a job pushing carts at Walmart, though not the same one that had hosed me the year before. I settled back in with the understanding that the cart pushing would not be a permanent state of affairs. I made an important decision early in this year when I decided to ask Ashley to marry me. I planned my proposal very carefully and we were engaged exactly one year after we started dating.
In school, I reached full burnout and had to drop a meteorology class that I would not be able to take again until 2019. I took that summer off and gave myself a rest from classes so I could prepare and be successful for the fall.
Pushing carts, however, was really beginning to wear on me physically as I often worked by myself, even on weekends, and was forced to delay and skip breaks to keep up with it. I asked for a transfer repeatedly from July on as I knew I was not going to last long going on as I was with the carts.
Fall arrived and I started back up at KU. I handled myself well that semester, taking fewer classes to ease the burden on myself, especially since I was running out of classes that I needed to take for my degree. In November, cart pushing finally got me and I developed the beginnings of a hip injury that plagues me to this day. Walmart's solution was to give me two weeks rest and then throw me back outside.
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| We didn't get engagement photos, so this is the closest thing we have |
2018
I quit Walmart within a month of the year starting. My hip injury had become entirely unmanageable and it was clear they were not going to let me transfer off the lot after six months of asking. I picked up Lyft driving at that time, something I still do today.
I took another few classes, leaving myself with two left when I would pick it up again in Spring 2019. I had other things going on as summer began. I started an internship at a local news station and, at long last, married Ashley.
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| A Reading of Vows |
Ashley has PCOS, so we did not know if or when she would be able to get pregnant. In what I have often classified as a miracle, she got pregnant the month after we got married. We had something to look forward to as...
2019
arrived. I started what I sincerely hope will be my last semester of school ever. I only had three classes, so I was able to continue driving as Ashley's due date approached. Everything I had ever wanted, a family of my own, finally came to be at 3:51 pm on Friday, March 29th, 2019, when our son James was born.
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| Our first family photo |
A month later, I got my degree in meteorology at long last. I am working hard to support Ashley and James, actively looking a job so she can continue to stay with James at home.
Those were my 2010s. They had their ups and downs and I am loathe to classify the decade as mostly good or mostly bad. What I do know is that I have my family and with the three of us together, we can face down anything the '20s have to offer.
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| Into the '20s together |
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