The Journey Begins

     Today I waited for an hour to get on a bus for St. Louis, MO. I sat there with Anna, hugging and kissing her because I knew I'd miss her for a while, at the very least two months. I'm pretty sure this will be a journey for both of us; Anna will discover her independence, and I will see if I have what it takes to become an over-the-road truck driver. It's not going to be easy. I'll spend 3 weeks training to get my CDL, and another 3-4 weeks with a trainer for real-world driving experience. I have a lot of work ahead of me, and getting on that bus was just the start.

     But right now I want to talk about something I really don't get into with anyone: myself. I'm a very reserved person, and I've always had mixed feelings about spending time with other people. It's not that I don't like people. I just seem to enjoy the silence more. A lot of my life has been spent by myself, either in my room when I was growing up, or at school walking hurriedly to my next class (since I didn't have anyone to stop and talk to.) Things just seem easier when I'm alone. But I'm grateful to have the friends I do have, and I wouldn't trade them for anything in the world.

     I barely graduated high school, just because I didn't really do much homework. School was very boring for me. I understood the ideas, but the way they wanted me to remember it all was just very lacking. Things clicked better for me when I was hands-on, and abstract ideas like symbolism were harder to grasp then something concrete like a math problem. I couldn't take it, and graduating was a joy. I wanted to NOT go to college, just because I felt like I would have the same problems I had during high school, but with a large debt to boot.

     So I took a lot of fast food jobs. Low pay, lots of hours, and minimal skill. Never kept one for longer than six months. Again, things just got boring. Moved between Indianapolis, to Southbridge, MA. The two best things in MA was Mom (because I'm kind of a momma's boy) and Anna, and when Anna left I had to follow her. I stayed in Missouri for a month, and eventually my Dad let her and I stay in their house back in Indiana for a bit. It was there that I got the only two jobs I've held longer than six months: unloading trucks at Meijer, and working at FedEx.

     Meijer wasn't too bad, but the people (read: teenagers) there frustrated me to no end, and once I had a decent income at FedEx, I put in my two weeks. FedEx has been a blast. Lots of stuff to learn and do, and I always felt like I've been valued. However, lately it's been starting to thin out. I was pushing for a Ramp Agent job, which would have me leading a group of people to get a flight out on time, but I had no real support from my management. I felt like I had hit the wall.

     I needed to start making more than $250 a week in order to start feeling like things weren't paycheck-to-paycheck. To make a long story shorter, I discovered Trucking Truth about a month ago because of a video game. The people on that site are fantastic, especially Brett Aquila, the man who runs the site. They're all upbeat and give fantastic advice on how to get started in the industry. Fast forward a few weeks and here I am, writing this blog.

     I know that was kind of long, and I completely understand if you feel like it is a TL;DR (too long; didn't read). The short version is I'm doing this for the money, for the challenge, and for the lifestyle. My wife is fully supporting me and as are my friends, and I couldn't be happier. Please let me know if you even read a paragraph. I don't want to do this if no one sees it, and I'm doing it for my friends.

     There are a lot of people who don't make it through the initial training, and I hope that I'll be excluded from that list. Only time will tell...