Your Defining Moment

[Rumpleforeskin]

So far in your life, what has been your defining moment? What is that one moment that you look back on and think, 'That defined who or where I am today.' Is it a cross-country move? Was it when your first child was born? Was it when you were married?


I have a few I am trying to narrow between. What is yours?

 

[HandsomeHarley]

I could make arguments for many things, but there's really only one.

The year was 1999. The SE that hired me for my first newspaper job wanted to get rid of me because, as he put it, "If you have a good third baseman, but a great third baseman comes along, you go to the great third baseman."

Fortunately, the wise ME said bull****, Harley isn't going anywhere.

Down in the dumps, licking my wounds and overall feeling miserable about my career choice and wondering what the hell I got myself into, two things happened that changed my outlook forever.

The first, we went to a local church where they were giving free health screenings for kids. While my wife took the kiddies around the booths, I wandered around the church and found myself in what appeared to be a young adults room.
There on the wall were stapled a bunch of stories that I had written, covering the kids in this group.
That was when I knew I was making a difference.

The second event came a month or two later at the state media awards. They asked for three samples of sports columns and one sample of a feature story for the previous year.

Well, having started my career in October, 1998, I only had three columns and one feature to turn in.

I took first place in both, to the delight of said ME (and my wife and mother-in-law), and a throng of TV-types at our table.

I know awards are kind of hokey and it's mostly a crap shoot who wins what, but that right there told me that I was a pretty good writer and was definitely in the right business.

It's now been more than nine years, four stops and several awards later. Yes, the pay sucks, sometimes the people suck, and right now, the new owner sucks. But I'm doing something that I know in my heart I am very good at and making a decent living. And that's what it's all about, folks.

 

[Bump_Wills]

Easy: Getting married. It was a singular moment in which I declared, before God and everybody, that my life was no longer being led in the service of my own selfishness.

I don't want to go all misty here, but there's nothing in life more wonderful or humbling than the feeling of responsibility for someone else, and she (or he) for you. To know that there's one person who gives a damn when you're hurting, who celebrates your successes, who will pick up the ball and carry it when you cannot.

 

[WaylonJennings]

I'd say when my wife, an old friend from college who I hadn't seen since graduation, emailed me out of the blue and wanted to go to a concert with my friends and I. Nothing's been the same since - in a very good way.

 

[Buck]

1982
I was 12 and took mescaline.

 

[shockey]

three moments. three little shockeys. the moments that keep on giving. 8)

 

[The Big Ragu]

Little Shockey's nuts.

 

[rube]

Sitting in a boring child psych class during sophomore year (when I was a secondary education major) listening to a room full of dip****s use the prof as their own personal shrink and thinking, "what the **** am I doing!?" I switched majors to jrn two days later, and have loved it ever since.

 

[Flying Headbutt]

Getting fired from a job. It had absolutely nothing to do with my work and I made sure I went out and proved that. Learned lots and lots about myself, the direction my life was going, and where I wanted it to go. The job I got after is a bazillion times better and has taken me to the cusp of attaining one of my greatest ambitions, professionally. In a lot of ways, that day I was fired was extremely liberating and I've definitely made the most of it.

 

[dooley_womack1]

The day Ryan Sonner complimented one of my posts.

 

[slappy4428]

The day Ryan Sonner complimented one of my posts.

Suckup.

 

[dooley_womack1]

It had previously been the moment BYH passed me, but I guess I consider myself redefined now.

 

[qtlaw]

Delivery of two little QTs, never been the same since (responsibility setting in and maturity).

 

[PeteyPirate]

Two chicks at the same time

 

[rube]

Two chicks at the same time

****in' A.

 

[imjustagirl]

I don't have one.

Which only makes me sadder about the current incarnation of my life.

 

[outofplace]

The birth of my daughter, because that really did change everything.

It was the most terrifying day of my life. We went from everything being normal to a birth by c-section. I had an irrational fear that something would happen to my wife in child-birth and that was my absolute nightmare.

I will never forget holding my daughter in my arms for the first time in the OR while the doctors began the work of closing my wife back up. The nurse reached out to take the baby back to do what they do and I remember turning my shoulders as if to protect her on instinct. The real joy of being a parent didn't hit me until later, when my wife was out of surgery and I finally had my family together and whole.

 

[andyouare?]

The night I gave a co-worker a ride to a night out with other people from our paper. I had a crush on her but didn't think she knew my name. To make a long story short, we kissed on the way home, got married 18 months later and had our first baby, a daughter, last year.

There is my life before that night and my life after. They are completely different.

 

[slappy4428]

I don't have one.

Which only makes me sadder about the current incarnation of my life.

Try the two chicks at a time thing... Seems to work for some people here

 

[John]

The day in early June 1997, when I walked into the Daily Mississippian at Ole Miss and asked about joining the sports staff. Eleven years later I'm still writing about sports, at a good paper in a great city.

I have no clue how my life would have turned out if I hadn't done it. I'd have probably gone to grad school and be teaching Southern literature somewhere.