Originally Posted by SoCalDrew

wow. i'm reading through this thread seeing some terrible answers/replies and all the sudden i see my name and business brought up by a couple of old schoolers who seem to have good things going but also seem to be very unhappy in life...lol wtf? don't need to justify my reasoning, but i'll explain my thinking when i moved out here and left my GF back in CA. (holy shit...it turned into a Cool Story Bro...sorry)

i've never known what i wanted to do with my life until recently. i always felt like i was put on this earth to do something special with my life but never had any direction. wanted to be an olympian but the closest i came was all-american (still very happy with tho). thought i wanted to be a lawyer, so i studied political science and was disappointed when i worked at a law firm and saw that most of the lawyers were very unhappy people. sure it could have been just where i worked, but it was enough for me to reconsider what i wanted to do/be. i just want to be happy in life. don't care too much about being a millionaire, but would like to live a comfortable life surrounded by a happy wife and little ones.

i came from divorced, working class parents who both had multiple marriages and worked multiple jobs just to make ends meet. i want more for my future family than barely getting by each month like we had when i was raised. i want one marriage, not multiple ones. they set good examples for me as far as how to be a loving parent and how to work your ass off to support your kids, but not good examples for a successful marriage or following your dreams as far as careers go. i'm not gonna settle like they did/had to. i wasn't happy working crappy jobs and i could see how that affected my relationships. hell, i could see how that affected my online persona of SCD...some of you will remember how bitter i used to be years ago. not the case as of late.

when i met SCJ in college (8 yrs ago), she was exciting and definitely the hottest girl i'd ever dated. we saw each other every day for the first few years and it was enjoyable. she would party and could drink me under the table which was cool as long as it wasn't a daily thing (it wasn't). as the years went by, our lives together got less exciting. she seemed to turn into her mother, who was (is) her best friend. i wanted excitement and to have fun and be happy while we were still relatively young. she wanted to stay at home all the time and never wanted to party or drink anymore. she told me we were too old to go out and to be getting drunk at all. wtf?...we were in our mid 20s. so any of you who met her on our vegas trips...that wasn't how she acted when we were home. she cared more about how she was perceived than how she actually was. didn't take constructive criticsm well and never seemed to be happy where she was in life. i honestly hope it's changed for her since we broke up. we talked about marriage some day, but both agreed that we wanted to have careers set first.

soooo...firefighting/ems. love the idea of helping people in need. if i can make a difference in someone's life when they are at a point where it feels like all hope is lost, then i feel like i've done my "something special" on this earth. i love the idea of having to be in good physical shape to be able to do your job. i know i know...there are plenty of out of shape FF's but believe me, they probably aren't good at what they do or they've taken an "easier"/less physically demanding job when responding to emergencies. i love the idea of constantly having to be a student of my craft in order to be up to par with the current state of my career. fire fighting techniques and emergency medicine change at least annually. there are constantly new methods/new medicines/etc that we have to be aware of. to rank up you have to pass tests and be toward the top of the list. you can't just put in your time and be terrible at what you do. well, i'm sure there are exceptions to any rule but i hope you get my drift.

i went to a fire academy in 2010 and realized this is what i wanted to do and also confirmed that it is something i CAN do without fear consuming me (some people cannot handle fire/confined spaces/heights/etc). since then, my focus was getting on somewhere in SoCal. unfortunately, they just weren't hiring fire fighters and if they were, there were like 1000-1 odds. i could be (and sometimes was) in the top 5% of applicants and would still walk away empty handed and dejected. so i branched out to big cities in other states like arizona, oregon, washington, colorado, and texas. i knew moving out of state was a possibility and she spoke as if she would seriously consider following me in the case that it happened. well, it happened.

i honestly thought she would move out here, at least for the short term. i was thinking of being out here for a few years then moving back...not so much now. hell, if she would have asked me not to go, i would have seriously considered it. but she never did. so i moved. she came out here every month and gave it 5 months or so before she called up and said she couldn't do it anymore. i was living it up here around dallas. i've lost like 20 pounds, am in the best shape since being on the track team in college, have over 100 new buddies, a new metroplex to discover, an exciting new career, and i was experiencing it all without her. she told me she was doing the same thing back home as she had been for the last few years...working and going home to watch tv til the next day. she said she wanted marriage and a family within two years and didn't see that happening with me out here in TX. well, to me that sounded like she either already had someone on the side or she had someone in mind.

anyway, i'm enjoying my professional life now. i'm happy with it where i've never been before. that's honestly more important to me than our relationship was, especially since it wasn't the best toward the end. i can see how being happy with that part of my life has translated to my dating life. i'm much more social than in the past and i know what i want (and DONT want) in a woman. i've hung out with more women in the past few months than i had the rest of my life combined. now that the professional part of my life is set, i can think about (and maybe have) finding another good woman who will make me happier than SCJ made me. now i'm off to go hang out with her! i feel extremely lucky with where i'm at in life right now.

thanks again for attempting to shit on my life decisions. i have no regrets and i'm honestly glad i got to see this written out to confirm my decision. i hope you guys can take an honest look in the mirror and say the same thing. if not, make a change! peeeeeace out

Money says she was banging other dudes before you left.

I hear she had it bad for another mod in the area, SCW

 

Originally Posted by Milo

My first thought was John wilkes Booth, as well . . . but Benedict Arnold has an entire "thing" named after him. I mean, no one ever says of an assassin that he as Booth-like in his method of killing. But you call someone a Benedict Arnold and they know what you mean instantly. So I think you have to give it to Benny.

That was my exact thinking for saying Arnold. The truth is though I'd bet if you're taking into account all the different demographics of America the answer is probably Charles Manson. Id'd bet more people in this country know who Charles Manson is than Benedict Arnold or John Wilkes Booth. Mostly because the other guys have been dead for a long time and a lot of people dont pay attention to shit that happened 150-200 years ago. I'd bet theres a lot of people who arent white who may have heard the name Benedict Arnold but they have no idea who he was. Almost everybody knows who Charles Manson is and have an understanding of what he is famous for. They may not know details about what he did but they know the face and they know he's a crazy killer. Where in the case of Arnold I bet everybody knows the name but not as many people know what he is famous for as you'd think. Same could be said for John Wilkes Booth. If you just said the name I'd bet theres a ton of people who wouldnt know what he's famous for. But I cant imagine many people hearing the name Charles Manson and not know immediately who you're talking about.

fuck, guess i should have finished reading the thread. i could have saw we've moved on from the actual topic and are discussing SCD's autobiography written on the last page. I didnt actually read it so dont take that seriously. My bad.

am i the only one who laughed really hard at the "I have over 100 new buddies" line form SCD?

Around here friends are measured ny who you trust your car with to get more beer.

I have 2 that I would toss my car keys to, lol @ 100.........

 

Originally Posted by Stynsty71

It wasn't obvious he was talking about the other firefighters he works with? Or are the last 3 posts levels?

Pretty clear I'm trolling after SCDs massive response.

oh look - another thread that turned into an OT gossip column.

wgaf what Socal does or why - more surprised that he even posted a response but that's his choice.

Al Capone
Charles Manson
Lee Harvey Oswald

Don't confuse stats with true buddies you see everyday or weekend.

 

Originally Posted by SmokeyCasinos

Don't confuse stats with true buddies you see everyday or weekend.

 

Originally Posted by XXEDPXX

you really love to like promote facebook. its cool and all but you praise that shit way too much. plus you're never willing to admit the downside of it which tilts me. maybe thats off. its just the way you like to talk about how great it is that tilts the shit out of me i guess. its like you have this assumption that if you dont have facebook you're not up with the times or something. you're such a social animal or whatever you cant grasp that some people arent feeling that shit. some people dont want their shit all out there like that. you're just dont grasp that some people are that way and are unwilling to admit its beneficial in many aspects and it kind of annoys me.

wowzers

Uhhhh thought it was beyond obvious that was a joke. Adding 100 people on facebook doesn't mean you have 100 friends. That wasn't promoting facebook, it was making fun of facebook.

 

Originally Posted by XXEDPXX

you really love to like promote facebook. its cool and all but you praise that shit way too much. plus you're never willing to admit the downside of it which tilts me. maybe thats off. its just the way you like to talk about how great it is that tilts the shit out of me i guess. its like you have this assumption that if you dont have facebook you're not up with the times or something. you're such a social animal or whatever you cant grasp that some people arent feeling that shit. some people dont want their shit all out there like that. you're just dont grasp that some people are that way and are unwilling to admit its beneficial in many aspects and it kind of annoys me. you try and make me feel inferior cause im an introvert or that its a bad thing to be that way. and plus your assumption that having someone as a facebook friend qualifies them as a real friend irks me. way to dilute what an actual friendship implies.

the last 4 or so lines are more of a joke. the rest is like 75% serious.

Im just gonna go ahead and apologize for wasting everybody's time.

 

Originally Posted by mathclub

lebron is famous for playing basketball.

the definition of infamy is being famous for doing something bad.

baskeball does not qualify as something bad.

lebron is not infamous.

Oh, come on. "Bad" is obv relative to the observer. Plenty of world figures are either famous or infamous depending on which side you sympathize with.

You don't see how lebron can be infamous to a segment of people? He's pretty well known for his "decision" too. Of course it's a stupid response to the OP but you can't say it's absolutely the wrong use of the word.

Benedict arnold was a famous patriot before he was an infamous traitor.

james earl ray
mark david chapman
and
lee harvey oswald

qed

 

Originally Posted by SoCalDrew

...

enjoyed reading that, you seem to have a pretty solid outlook on life