What were you doing when you were 23?

Ask me in seven months.

 

I graduated from college after five years (four years in I changed majors). I enjoyed the life, but after four and half years the college-frat life was old and tired. I was ready to get out. This was my job-of-the-month-club period.
One week after graduation I took a job as a car salesman. I sold three cars and lasted 30 days. The sales manager was bitching me out one day and asked if I enjoyed working there. I cocked my head (a light went on!) and I said 'no.' Packed my stuff and left.
Sidebar: One of the guys who was hired with me had a wife and two young kids. They were barely getting by, eating hot dogs every night for dinner. Poor guy, a week after being hired he crashed a used Ford Probe into the side of the building. Car dealer went apeshit.
Two years later, dealership was closed and dealer and his shitstick kid go to jail for fraud. I still think about the guy and his family. I hope he's doing OK.
Three weeks after leaving I was on my way to Greer, S.C. to attend Steak University - it was kind of like 'Hamburger the Motion Picture' only without the sex and Dick Butkus - and become a restaurant manager. Six weeks later I'm in Danville, Va., miserable.
Four months later, I'm transferred closer to home, with better pay, but still working 70-80 hours a week and miserable.
I quit, but not before they offer me 30K to stay. Little did I know it would take me 12 years in the newspaper industry to equal that payscale. ... Sheesh. I lied and told them I had a radio job lined up, when in fact I had shit.
I moved back home - with my parents - and got a job with (cue the music) 84 Lumber.

At 23, I was still more than a year away from beginning my newspaper career - and like many of you heavily in debt.

 

Oh yes, the infamous cult episode. That's a doozy.

 

I had just started the last two years of my undergrad. I was working 40 hours at the local newspaper as a part-timer and delivering USA Today, which took about 25 hours a week. Life sucked.

 

At 23? Not a good year for me. I quit on school, then quit school officially, and eventually lived at home for a while. I probably had a textbook case of depression, but never got it officially diagnosed.

At the same time, I also hit the peak of my career at the time stringing the Indiana Pacers playoff run that year, getting a chance to do the Eastern Conference finals. But since I wasn't done with school, it was a creative dead end. Less than two months later, I was living at home, not enrolled in school.

Midway through the year, going nowhere at a video store job (but enjoying the goof asses I worked with a little too much for my own good), I was robbed at gunpoint. That woke my ass up. I began to think what a waste my life would have been if that crackhead had put a cap in my ass.

I got my shit together, re-enrolled in school, got my stringer job back, and graduated less than a year later. Because of the time gap in my experience, it took some time to get a full-time job, but once I did, I became the wild success I am today.

I also had a lot of sex with my future wife.

 

At 23 I covering one of the most gawdawful women's basketball teams, like ever, except they weren't even the worst college women's team in town, yea, I covered that crap ass team too.

I was also back in school, drinking too much and living with my sister and her fiancee.

And Stan hadn't yet entered my life.

 

I had just gotten married after moving to the U.S., and was waiting for my work permit and permanent residence card to come through.

 

See? Rush Limbaugh can help people turn their lives around.

 

I probably did much worse than say "hubba hubba" but I just don't remember. Although I don't think it invloved comments about women. Those ultra-feminists I was running around with at the time would have sawed off my sack.

 

I was a business major.

After diving into the workforce after high school, I didn't start school until I was 19. When I did, my father -- he's mellowed recently -- basically forced me into sales.

I just couldn't handle all the math, so I joined the worst communications department in state later that year. The rest of my college experience was a blur -- getting shut out for the college rag's SE job, stringing for a few local papers and doing one too many beer bongs.

 

I was in jail, serving the first part of a 5-7 stint for assault. Don't fuck with me.