Part 7 of the never ending blog entry. Trust me it all goes by really fast after this. I suspect this will be the last part in the series since nothing interesting happened between Spring of 08 and December of 09. oh well. I'll let you decided if it's interesting. In the mean time if your just now joining the blog go back to Part 1 and start there.
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Ok, I left off with me moving to Tampa with a friend and leaving my job.
The next few weeks went by the fastest of any time in my life and before I knew it graduation was upon me. Maggie was also graduating the same time as me and all of her family flew down for the big day.
By this time we had been dating for quite awhile and many of our friends and family were pressuring us to get engaged. We ignored them and instead blazed our own path of love.
Graduation itself was a boring event as usual with all the pomp and circumstance that such events are required to have even as all in attendance wish they did not. All I remember of the commencement speech was some football analogy the speaker used. I can't remember who the speaker was, why he used such a boring analogy, or really anything else of the event. Since my last name was Storey I sat towards the end of the graduating students’ seats, Maggie being in a different major and having a last name that starts with D sat in what seemed like a distance of miles from me. From my seat I could see my entire family quiet well. My parents were there, along with my cousins and other family. Some had come from out of state and all were doing the typical things my family does, that means lots of pictures, hugs, and silly antics.
The entire process seemed to go by so fast and yet so slow. I can barely remember it, its all a blur except for the moment that I walked across the stage, shock Dr. Rutland's hand (we were one of the last classes to have Dr Rutland proceeded over us, a 2 years or so after this he left for Oral Roberts University) , he whispered in my ear, I glanced a smile at Dr Fetke, Dr. Hackett, Hemby (he is the reason I survived my senior year!), and Dr Waddell (by far the professor who has had the largest impact upon me, he showed me what a professor truly is and how to balance reality and religion, something I still struggle with but now I have an understanding of how and why this struggle takes place). I also smiled at Mrs Rutland, another person who had a major impact upon me. She kept me from totally rebellion and to this day I thank her for that. She was one of the few people at the school that I could trust and we both shared secret struggles that I am confident are still kept within the confines of our trust bond. I can't give enough praise to the amazing couple that Dr and Mrs. Rutland are, nor can I truly explain the impact that they and these great professors I mentioned had upon me.
After these few seconds of smiles, photographs, and handshakes the ceremony became a blur again. Move the tassel and off to the lawn for some photos. After the photos it was off to lunch. I had made reservations for all of Maggie and I's family and friends to eat with us at a small restaurant in downtown Lakeland, Harry's, a seafood chain that all could afford and yet was classy enough to pull off the stunt I was about to do.
Lunch began with all of our friends and family there. I stood to make a toast, extremely nervous, pulled out a rough handwritten note I had in my pocket and began. I can't remember all of what I said but I do remember a few lines...
The most important one was when I got on my knee and asked Maggie to marry me. She said yes and we both held each other crying. Everyone around the table and what seemed to be the whole restaurant cheered for us.
That evening Maggie's family and mine all went to Narcoossee's at Walt Disney World's Grand Floridian Hotel for a celebratory dinner and soon we were planning every detail of the wedding.
Late in December we headed to Maggie's parents house in Nashville for Christmas, the road trip was a great time to plan the major aspects of the wedding.
In January things had settled back down, I was living in Tampa, Maggie in Lakeland still, and both of us were looking for jobs. She quickly found one at a local daycare but my search wasn't so quick. At the same time as all this the global economy began to collapse. Here we were fresh out of college, newly engaged, and the entire economy was starting to fall apart.
I finally landed a part time job at a local movie rental store. I was still filling out what seemed to be hundreds of applications, going on dozens of interviews but with no luck. On more than one occasion the place I interviewed went out of business due to the downturn in the economy before I could even hear back from them.
My father by this point had lost his job and was also looking. I eventually got a barista position with an independent coffee shop, mostly due to the manager being from the church with which I had previously worked. The church had begun laying off dozens of employees and its attendance (from the reports people told me, I had not really been back to church since leaving it in '07) was dropping.
Some of those laid off joined together and helped create a new church for 20-somethings in the Tampa area. The previous church was gracious enough to help sponsor them and provide with numerous tools of assistance. Maggie and I began attending there but within half a year or so knew this wasn't really the place for us.
I was applying for many churches still hoping for a youth ministry position but despite the promises of some pastors I got no job offers.
My friend with whom I moved to Tampa with had met a girl and moved in with her. Luckily my old roommate from Lakeland, Will, needed a new place to live and had moved in a few months prior. An ad on Craigslist found us a new roommate within a short period of time but this one was not nearly as personable as Will or my friend who I had lived with.
An old contact from a church I attended in Orlando offered me a job with his company. I was a custom theme park tour concierge for the Orlando theme parks. The first two weeks went by amazingly with me making more money than I had ever made and all the while doing it by spending my days in theme parks with families. I loved it. After a few weeks though the whole thing began to unravel, rumors of illegal activities began to surface and I began seeing many negative aspects of the company. After a too short of a time I informed him I was leaving. This was my dream job but again I had to walk away without knowing what was around the bend for me. I just knew I could not work for a company with seemingly unethical business practices. To this day I wish that this had worked out differently because this job was and still is my ultimate dream job. I view the few weeks with the company a true gift, many people never get to work their dream jobs, I did even if it was just for a few weeks.
In the Fall of 08 I went through a 3 day training and became a substitute teacher for Hillsborough county. I subbed in only middle school and high schools and the work was becoming pretty steady. I left the video store and kept the subbing and coffee house jobs.
The subbing job was fickle to say the least, some weeks I was filled while other weeks I had not a single job. Luckily the coffee shop job was going good. The company opened a third location in downtown Tampa and since I lived the closest to the new location I was moved there. It was a small one person operation within a larger dining facility in a downtown tower. I loved it though, for the first time I was working amongst the city workers. I woke up early and drove into the city, parked in the parking area just as the sun was peaking over the buildings. I quickly had a number of normals, mostly from the local federal courthouse, but other were from the many walks of life found in Tampa. I spent my days perfecting the perfect Tampa Cafe con Leche and chatting with the infamous Jeannie Robinson, the daytime bartender serving the last 22 years(!!) at the almost as famous as her dive bar directly across from the coffee shop. Her sarcastic wit helped me through those long days of few sales.
In the afternoons after I got off work I would walk through downtown Tampa taking in the financial district style hustle the town has. Downtown is a beauty during the day with all the business people running about. Sadly at five o'clock the entire downtown seemed to shut down and not open back up till 9 the next morning.
I befriend many of the homeless people and extremely cold days would give them the coffee I would have instead thrown out.
By January of 09 it was obvious the downtown location wasn't making any money. The owner abruptly shut down one of the other locations, breaking his lease and informing the staff of the closer though a note taped to the front door. Then the thing we all expected happened, one afternoon just as I was pulling into my drive from work the owner called and let me go over the phone. He attempted to run the location himself but within a few weeks of letting me go he shut down the downtown location, again breaking a lease and only informing those involved after the fact.
I still had the subbing job but was getting few jobs with it. I started picking up more jobs and was soon filling almost every day with subbing. Life seemed calm again. My roommate got job with a locally based shopping network and was buying many electronics for the house making the place look very comfortable.
In the spring I went away for a few days for a short camping trip with a friend from Southeastern, he had since left to attend UCF and we went camping to catch up on all we had missed out on by not seeing each other the last year or so.
While camping he told me about his new degree concentration. Sociology. I had never heard of this field but the more he told me about it the more I fell in love with it. After a few days we came out of the woods, I refreshed and knew what I had to do. I immediately began looking into sociology, downloading podcasts and meeting with local university advisors.
I took a long-term subbing job through the rest of the school year at an inner city middle school teaching 6th grade Social Studies. The teacher's mother had cancer and the teacher needed to move to North Carolina to help her mother through treatment. The two and half months at that school forever changed me. For the first time I saw inner city youth first hand, not just the ones that were dropped off at church but the ones who no one dropped off anywhere. I asked the teacher if she assigns homework, her response was "We can't give them homework when they have no homes." I had students who were homeless, some were on drugs and more than once I checked my campus mailbox in the morning only to find a arrest record for one of my students.
That short period of time I was with I fell in love with them, through all the hard aches and distributive students a few truly rose to the top and their grades showed it. In the midst of this I was interviewing with schools about Master programs, I had narrowed it down to three schools, 2 public universities where I was looking at Sociology and one private one for a Humanities or MBA degree. I finally decided on UCF for the Sociology department. I liked the people I had met in the meeting and I had by this point grown homesick and wanted to move out of Tampa.
In the midst of the daily seemingly battle teaching at the inner city middle school I began studying for the GRE. One day I had to have a substitute (do you see the irony?) come in for me and I went and took it the GRE at USF. The next day some of my students gave me good luck cards they had made the day before.
I finished out my time at the school and was soon afterwards accepted at UCF. Both of my roommates moved out and I put my house up for sale. The realtor seemed to not be selling it though, a point of many fights between my father and I. I found out that the realtor had been in the hospital; he was out though and began showing the house again. Then seemingly without any sign of warning he passed away. Luckily his assistant stepped in and took over where he had left off, it taught me though to always appreciate what a person is doing even if it doesn't meet your expectations. I moved home with my parents as I transited into my new life in Orlando. By the fall of '09 my father had found a new job, as did my mother who had also went a few months without one.
Maggie, my friend Big D and I had a road trip to Shreveport, Louisiana where Maggie moved for the last part of '09. Her sister in law was going through nursing training and was doing her clinicals so Maggie moved in with them to help take care of her brother and sister in laws two daughters. The road trip was tough, as was the 4 and half months Maggie and I spent apart.
The time though went by fast due to my schooling. I started at UCF in August of '09 beginning the process of attaining my M.A. in Sociology. That first semester challenged me more than any schooling had before. I started working in the research lab within the sociology department, doing phone surveys working a couple of days a week.
By the end of September I found an room for rent in downtown Winter Park. I had long been in love with Winter Park and its beautiful downtown. The guy renting the room was a senior in the sociology undergrad program at UCF. I moved into the room the first week of October. Him and I hit it off immediately and today I view him and my former roommate Will two of my closest friends.
In December of 09 Maggie finally came back from Louisiana, coming back with a new appriciation of the urban life found in Florida. For the first time since we began dating she had Christmas in Florida, with my parents and I. They had the month before moved into my grandparents old house, a smaller house in Mt. Dora. A much smaller and more centrally located house for them. The house that I grew up in since I was in 4th grade was sold.
These two events, Christmas in Florida and the selling of my childhood home, confirmed for me that a new chapter of my life was taking shape. I began this chapter all those years ago alone in a public school cafeteria, attempting to break out of the former self from middle school and truly find the self I was comfortable with. Now ten years later, it was as though every aspect of that old self was finally gone.
I was no longer alone, instead I was engaged and meeting new people in graduate school. I was no longer the religious fanatic I used to be, instead I was working through the many truths I had come into contact with while trying to find a church job and was now still wanting to help people but in entirely new ways.
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