Unbelievable.

I had some trouble with my Graphic Design Program back in May of 2004. I wasn't sure where I was going to go, had no self-confidence, and I felt like everything around me was out of my control. I was in the worst physical shape I had ever been, I was consistently broke, and I had no cigarettes left to tide my nicotine addiction. Due to a two-day "allnighter," then slept for most of another day, I hadn't had a smoke in, roughly, a three day period.

In short, I was a wreck. When the mental stress of where I felt I was heading with school, my full-time job, and my general station in life, I almost cracked.

Then, out of the blue, I came to a conclusion.

I was tired of living like this. I wanted to actually be proud of what I had done in my studies, and I wanted to be proud of the work I achieved. I wanted to run my own show - be in business for myself - because I saw a lot of solutions to basic workplace problems in the hospital at which I worked, and realized, as a low man on the totem pole, that my suggestions or points didn't count. I was of the opinion that this would be a regularly occurring phenomena in my professional life, and I didn't want spend my professional working life that frustrated.

But most importantly, I did not want to be out of control of my own destiny. I understood that there are "X" factors that we cannot control, but I did want to control the things I could.

So, I made some changes.

I quit smoking cold turkey. As most of the nicotine had left my system, all I had to really do was resist the psychological urge to pick up a smoke. Nowadays, cigarette smoke makes me feel ill - I feel no need to pick up a pack of Camels, not even if I've been out drinking with friends.

I joined a gym - Gold's Gym in Columbia (though the one in Columbia got bought out and is called something else now). I would go on and off, as I could ( I did have a full load of classes and a fulltime job, so sometimes sacrifices had to be made). Nowadays, I am in a very regular weekly gym routine and have been for a while.

Most importantly, I changed my tune on how I viewed the world and how I acted in it. Things which I knew to be true, like my own responsibility and culpability in my life, I acknowledged. I stopped blaming my genes for my weight, and started blaming myself and my choices for it. If I did poorly in school, I took it as being my fault, instead of the professor's or the school's fault. I started planning out how I wanted my life to be, post-graduation.

One day, while running through a Staples for drafting supplies, I accidentally discovered a book. It was on the bottom shelf of a cardboard drop-bin display in the middle of the aisle, filled with 7 Habits of Highly Successful People-like books. This one, however, took me by surprise.

It was Shut Up, Stop Whining, and Get a Life: A Kick-Butt Approach to a Better Life by Larry Winget. A title like that jumps out at you, whether you agree with its sentiment or not.

For the record, I certainly agreed with it. I picked it up without thumbing through it, and bought it on the spot. I read it in about two days. What was most interesting in reading it was that there were a lot of spots where the author writes, after making a point, something along the lines of "I've gone too far, you say?" which puzzled me - because pretty much everything he wrote I agreed with already (except for rap - I'll listen to Wu Tang or the Roots as easily as I'll listen to Buck Owens, Freddie Mercury, Frank Zappa, or John Coltrane. Oh, well. Each to their own).

In any case, the book was read and re-read. I got a couple of books on CD from his website and listened to them to and from work and school, not so much to learn, but to pump myself up psychologically for my day. It got me through school, it made my day job bearable, and gave me the audacity of faith in myself to have the life I wanted after school.

Fast forward to the current day. I am being put out to pasture from my current position (outsourced), to which I can really only say that our separation is mutually agreeable. So, I am going fulltime in my freelance endeavors, and have surprisingly good prospects. I am, two years after getting my sheepskin, independent, through and through.

I'm on my way.