Personal narrative and reflective writing

Personal Narrative

Today I'm a member of the U.S. Navy, which I joined when I was 24 years old. Some people have an entire plan for their lives from the very beginning, but not me. I started out in high school loving sports, having a passion fort playing football, basketball and running track. Being strong at sports I felt invincible and was over the top with self-confidence. Going to school parties and being consumed with how strong and confident I was, I never really thought about the future. The present was too much fun and my plan was to enjoy each day, not think ahead for the future.

When I was getting ready to graduate I sent out letter after letter to division one Colleges and Universities with high hopes of acceptance.

No one accepted me, in fact every single college and university rejected me. From the highs of confidence in high school to the lows of realizing I was definitely not going to a division one college stunned me. I felt like all the doors that had opened so easily for me in my like were suddenly slamming shut. The loudest shutting door was on my dream of being in college. I was devastated.

A played the game however and tried to put on a strong, happy face for friends and family members so no one would know I had no future in place. I hadn't ever considered failure as an option in my life, and with the doors closed in front of me that had swung open so often before, I didn't know where to turn. I partied at the end of school and tried to make the future sound bright but I had no idea of what I was going to do.

My Mom called my bluff often and saw right through the act. She was always asking me "What are you going to do with your life?." Clearly she was upset and disappointed with me. She always asked me about college and would frequently verbalize this is statements like Are you going to go to college?," "if not you need to get a job." I knew because I didn't have a plan in place for the future my Mom was starting to feel like a failure too and that crushed me. When she turned around in the room after one of her comments to me once I saw her pain. It was one of the worst days of my life.

To get something at least going for the future I decided to enroll in the local community college. My plan was to get the basic prerequisites out of the way and transfer to a four-year college to get into their athletic program. Then it happened. I had some pain in my side and the doctor told me I needed a hernia operation. Again once I was on track for the future and then my life took a bad turn. I was so worried about my health I had trouble staying focused on my studies, and with the hope of an athletic career nearly gone due to the operation, I lost interest and started to drift in classes thinking about how much I wanted to get into a four-year college for athletics and now I would be lucky to even get past a physical.

A decided to get out of community college and sell for a security alarm company. I quickly found that this was a bad idea, so I switched over to working for Budget Car Rental at a local airport. I loved this job, I had a chance to work with cars, customers, and clean them sometimes. I wasn't making hardly any money but my mind was off the pain of not being able to pursue my dreams of athletics.

Next I took on a job being Customer Service Rep for the company and with the many incentives to earn extra cash I was hooked. I was all over the opportunities to earn more cash and found it easy to sell products and upgrades to rental car customers. It was like the job and I were on the same wavelength, and I was making enough money to move out of my Mom's house. The old feelings of confidence started coming back and I felt invincible again. In my mind I was the man, had the future nailed again and best of all, was getting respect from the dollars I was pulling down and the freedom it bought me. I was having a great time and got a little big-headed.