Failing into Success

The happiness in this picture is off the charts, but don't be fooled - it wasn't always this way.

Yes, my adult life started as a failure. Well, really, it started a few years before that, but I guess to get the whole picture, we need to go back a few years...

Picture it - Summer 2010 after my sophomore year of high school.

YIKES. Anyway, this picture was taken just before we left Wyoming and headed back to California, again. Headed for my 12 school in my schooling career, and my THIRD high school. Yes, we moved a lot. My dad was a dream chaser, which is probably where I got it from, so we went all over California, Wyoming, and a short stint in Utah through out my childhood. So, after leaving Wyoming again and faced with entering ANOTHER new high school, I decided to go into online schooling;so I could make money instead of new friends. Which worked out wonderfully! Until I decided after finishing junior year early that I didn't want to deal with school anymore, said fuck it, and got my GED. Can you imagine the father of a 4.0, sports playing, non trouble making little girl dropping out and getting her GED? To say he was upset would be an understatement. Eventually he'd get over it. But, that leads me to my next failure...

Redding - Summer 2012

Running away to northern California. Oh, so many memories. How can you not laugh at this? Well at least it makes me laugh. In all honesty, the only reason I have this picture is because a man from Iowa asked to take it, because no one back home would believe him if he told them about me. But anyway, back to the point - I was young, dumb, and starving. 800 miles away from any family, living in what was essentially a utility closet big enough for a full size bed, in a 3 bedroom house with 8 other people. Yes, eight. Did I mention only 2 of those other people had jobs? Or that we didn't have any electricity? Or that there were bugs everywhere? Also, the incredible POS boyfriend that was totally content to get blackout drunk every day and leave trails of puke for me to clean up(literally and figuratively) along the way? Does that sound like winning to you? Unable to take the bugs and the dark anymore, I got myself a little apartment, paying $600 a month basically for a place to sleep 5 hours a day. 18yo punk kid, working for Stoney's Hippy Gifts and Goods, smoking a cigarette, standing on the corner of California St in downtown Redding. Really though, Stoney's was just my favorite job out of 4 at the time, and not for the reason you think.

My whole first year as an adult was spent working, smoking, or starving - most of the time all at once. I was up and out of the house before 8AM Mon-Sat so I could catch a ride into town for work, except work started at 10:30. So I would walk the mall for a couple hours, then head into Chipotle, where I would spend my day until 4. Then, I would walk the hill up to Waterworks Park, usually to work a private party as a lifeguard, from 6-11. Fortunately, I never had to walk to Stoney's after a shift at WWP, because I don't know if I would have been able to stand for my 11:30-3AM shift. 

Of course my schedule varied from time to time, but you get the gist. I had 2 days off a month, making enough to cover the essentials and a pack of cigarettes a day, because it's cheaper to smoke than it is to actually be full! But at Stoney's, I had my first taste of entrepreneurship. The owner, Kendall, had created this business and ran it successfully. His own hours, whatever he wanted in his store, hiring whoever he wanted. It was insane. He was there every day, just doing what he wanted. And for whatever reason, he really liked me. He would say I was a lion in a sea of sheep. Wise beyond my years, mature, business minded. He offered to let me run a shop for him in LA. ME. At 18. I never knew why, but he believed in me, let me run the shop alone once or twice. That's where I got the 'be your own boss' bug.

While I was clearly not successful, I had seen what it was like. Of course, there was nothing I could do about it at the time, at least until I met the guy that changed everything, swept me off my feet, brought me back down south, and started a family over the course of the next 2 years. It was a wild ride, but I wouldn't trade that 'failure' for anything in the world. That failure is the reason for my success.

So when married, new mom me had seen the opportunity to start a business from home in the field I had always wanted to be in arised, I was EXCITED where most people might be scared, or skeptical. What, like I was AFRAID of failure? *insert eye roll* Worst case scenario, it didn't work out, and I would still be a happily married new mom to a beautiful baby boy. I've seen worse. 

Coming off of my last blog post, failure is just a set up to something bigger and better. Had I not seen it before, tasted the failure and see the other side working at Stoney's, would I have passed up the opportunity when I saw it? Would I have worked the way I do, knowing what it's like to be that low? Who knows *shrug* but I can only think so. When you start as a 'failure' you aren't afraid of so many things. If I hadn't decided to go for it or it didn't work out, then I would've put Abe in daycare and gone back to work. Something I am extremely familiar with. OR I could take the chance and possibly never work for anyone else again and retire Trevor early. Worth the risk. 

The point is, I wasn't then and I'm not afraid now to fall on my face. That's the beauty of failing. It takes away the fear. It opens up all sorts of new doors to fail and fail again into success the way it did for me.

What would you do not if you couldn't fail, but if you weren't afraid to fail? 

All my love, Sammi