DAY 10 OF 31 OF THE NEW YEAR’S WRITING CHALLENGE

A List of Some Great Accomplishments Across My Lifetime

Again, I couldn’t find just one great accomplishment, and I will list a few

Childhood, school, and the many individual awards and achievements

As someone who earned many awards and achievements throughout my young life, I’m no stranger to accomplishing things. I’ve been an honors student many times over. I’ve won multiple spelling bees. I’ve even won a sixth-grade team mathematics competition for my school, almost singlehandedly.

Then I got to high school, and I did more in my high school years academically even as I let my grades go down because I didn’t have the work ethic at the time. I won multiple individual achievements at my school in the Academic Decathlon. I was the first junior to win the individual top honor for my school and then went on in my senior year to do it twice in a row.

It felt like I was on top of the world when it came to scholastic and academic achievement. All of this culminated in my being considered for national merit scholarships and the district-wide teaching scholarship that I was coveting. I won the latter and missed the deadline to apply for the former but I got a full ride to college with the one I landed.

My young adult life started out rough but I think that it helped to motivate me and build my work ethic

Then came accomplishments as an adult. As I knew that my brain alone wasn’t going to carry me very far, I needed to develop a stronger work ethic. I knew that I had it in me because I had worked hard when I was younger in elementary school and my mom was a hard-working immigrant from a third-world country. There was definitely going to be something ingrained into my psyche that would allow me to kick into the extra gear I needed.

After wasting a few years of my life in a relationship that wasn’t right for me, dealing with my sister and her abusive and drug-dealing boyfriend, and losing my scholarship, I had to basically try to build everything back up from scratch. I lost nearly everything that I had earned and was forced into working hard as a man in his mid-20s at that point.

Then came the music and my first fun adult job

It took a long time but I built my way back up through connections and reputation. I became a karaoke DJ at a local bar and landed a gig that would allow me to showcase my talent in musical performance. I did that for about seven years and gained connections. Those connections eventually led me to judge local music contests and scout local talent for the California State Fair for years.

Sure, in contrast, this part of my life doesn’t sound like as big of an accomplishment as what I did in school but it was definitely rewarding. Naturally, this was also the point when I started drinking just a little bit more on average than I was used to. Most of my gigs were at bars, after all.

I didn’t let it get in the way too much as I’ve always had control over that for the most part. I did let it get out of control a couple of times and one of those times led to a major knee injury that I still deal with today but the majority of the time, I kept it under control.

Then coming out and finding my current partner in my early 30s

Then came the next transition once that part of my life ended. I came out as gay finally in my late 20s to early 30s and I was ready to date. I dated a lot of guys in a short amount of time. I then found my current partner of nearly nine years in that timeframe as well.

When he met me, let’s just say that I had hit rock bottom for probably like the second or third time in my adult life. I had a very low-paying job and was on the verge of being kicked out of my shared home with my roommate because I was regularly late or absent with the rent. Mike made me want to do and be better than that.

I decided to leave my roommate of three years and figure out my own path with my partner after only about a month of dating. We moved in and out of so many places that Mike had to leave for a few months to go to do some work to get us some extra money.

It was certainly a struggle once Mike and I decided to make a life together but I finally came up and we were able to succeed for a while

He went to New York and I was in California at the time. I had to pick myself up yet again and figure out how I was going to do my part one more time. I ended up getting a job at Verizon Wireless in March 2015 after a series of interviews and tests.

I wasn’t sure if I was even going to get the job. I was homeless and sleeping on a couple of friends’ couches with Mike more than 2000 miles away when I landed the highest-paying job I’d ever had. I finally landed us the money we needed and in two weeks' time the apartment to back that up.

He came home to a more motivated and financially successful partner and we had celebrated yet another hurdle overcome and another accomplishment made.

I can’t really pick out which one of these accomplishments in the past was the best so I listed them all. Life definitely had its ups and downs for me but I feel like I learned something valuable from each turn.

I know that this one ran a little longer than my other ones, Keeley Schroder. It was hard to limit the word count for this last prompt since I had so much to discuss in so little of a framework. I still kept it under 1000 words (I know that is not 500) so I hope that 850ish words are okay just this once. Thank you for this amazing writing challenge journey.

Again, as always, I’ve also got to give a shoutout to the group doing this challenge as well.

Autistic Widower (“AJ”), Karen Schwartz, Adrienne Beaumont, Bernie Pullen, NancyO, Robert G. Longpré — [he/him] — Canadian métis, Katie Michaelson, Vidya Sury, Collecting Smiles, Brett Jenae Tomlin, and redkitewrites.