Bouncing Back in a Big Way

I’d like to write a nice blog for the kids teaching them a valuable lesson about how hard work pays off. Something about how if you just work hard enough towards your goals all your dreams come true. It'd be nice to say that all my hard work had finally paid off, but for me, that wasn’t really the case at all. After working hard to try and get a steady a job with good pay doing whatever I thought I’d be good at, I fell ass-backwards into the perfect job. Other than doing well in an interview, I struck gold by chance and by chance alone. I guess it really is better to be lucky than good. 

I wanted to pick up some extra work so I emailed the guy who hired me in Panama City Beach, hoping he might have some projects he could put me on for a weekend or two. There was no elaborate cover letter explaining why I'm such a good worker. In fact, I didn't even attach my resume. He told me they were about to hire an intern for a promotional college football tour, and it turned out I emailed him on the last day of interviews. 

He happened to work just outside of Charlotte and two hours later I was sitting across a desk from him being told what the position entailed. A tour manager and I would be traveling to college towns across the South in the most bad ass RV I've ever seen and going to some of the biggest college football games in the country. My job would consist of organizing promotions for a barbecue sauce company and executing them at bars and tailgates. It was only an internship, but the pay was decent, and the experience would open up some doors for me. I absolutely murdered the interview and walked out of the office with near certainty that I got the job.

A few days later he emailed me. He said the decision came down to me and the guy who had done the same job last year. They decided to go with him because he had the experience of already working the job and he already knew the markets they would be going to. It wouldn't have been fair to not let someone come back who had done well for them the previous year. It was basically the same outcome as almost every job I had interviewed for that I had really wanted in the past year and a half. I was a great candidate, but there was always somebody else that had a little bit of an edge on me. I felt like the wind was out of my sails again and I was back to aimlessly bobbing around in life.

I continued reading the email as he further explained why I didn’t get the internship. They felt that I was overqualified to be working as an intern. Instead, he wanted to hire me as a tour manager for another promotional tour. They had decided to let an employee go and I would be his replacement.  I would be traveling the country to work at NFL and MLB games, I would be making much more money, and I would be promoting one of America’s largest breweries and one of my favorite brands. I’d drive a mobile bar to tailgates in different cities, have my expenses covered, and have a new team of promotional models to manage at each stop. 

It was about as close to being a professional tailgater as I could imagine. Instead of having to pay to travel around and go to sporting events, which was all I really wanted to do anyways, I found a way to get paid to do it. I’d get to do for a living what some people would kill to do. I still didn't have my own car and I was relying on Dan for a place to live when I went to the interview. In a few short days I got one of the only jobs that would've made owning a car and having my name on a lease more of liabilities than assets. I suffered another maniacal laughing attack, but this time it was about how so much that had once been problems in my life and how nothing going at all as planned had suddenly paved the road towards landing the perfect job. 

"Destruction leads to a very rough road
            But it also breeds creation
            And earthquakes are to a girl's guitar
            They're just another good vibration" 

-Red Hot Chili Peppers