So, it was only an audience of one, but my friend Melody came by yesterday on her way to go see another one of our friends who she also hasn't seen since high school because she wanted to hear my speech.  Not only was I touched, but it means so much to have a friend who follows through on the promises made.  Melody and I just reconnected this year.  We went to high school together, we knew who each other was, but we were never friends.  Our friendship literally started less than 2 weeks ago and I'm beyond happy to have her as a friend.

For the longest time now I always felt that my confidence was backfiring on me.  I didn't gain my confidence until after I lost 65 pounds my senior year in college.  Before then I wasn't comfortable with who I was and it was a large struggle to not only be natural, but find a way to be natural and try and make new friends.

Friends, or people who I considered friends, would always back out on plans at the last minute.  It would get to the point, even last month, where I still expected someone to cancel on me somehow, even if there were no signs that anyone was going to be breaking plans...and, unbelievably, there was always a new excuse to be found.  Maybe that can be my next book...the excuses I have heard to break or postpone set plans.

Anyway, Melody is my first new friend who followed through on the plans we set.  She reached out to me and asked if she could come over and she came when she told me she would. (I'm a sucker for punctuality.)  I gave her the speech, lost my place a couple times, but by the time I finished Melody was blown away.  She loved it, or at least that is the reaction I got from her.

It just felt so nice to have someone who genuinely cares and someone who will reach out and voluntarily make themselves part of what you are doing.  When people want to be part of your life, instead of you always inviting people into your life, that's when you know you are making it good...and it feels so good.

It's funny because Melody and I weren't friends 3 weeks ago and now she is celebrating my speech and I'm celebrating her internship in Hawaii.  It's great to find a friend who reaches for her dreams for whatever it takes and includes other people on the journey with her.  She's been the only person to hear or even read my speech and she genuinely loved it.  That's all I need to know that I am going to dominate this speech tomorrow.  That, and I know I'll have a new friend who is going to celebrate the success of this speech with me after I get home, and more importantly, someone who wants to celebrate with me.  I only have a few friends like that.  I hold them closest and am thankful so often that they are in my life.

And see, I know they are going to stay...because I don't always have to reach out to them.  They reach out to me too.  Both of us want to stay in each other's lives, which is exactly why I don't need to think about where our friendships will be 5 years from now because we are simply enjoying being with each other in the present.  There are a lot of celebrations and phone calls to come with these few friends because I never have to worry about the friendship going away; it's not going anywhere.

I am so proud of how far I have gotten myself.  It's funny, but one of my side-effects to my disability is that I will stutter on certain words or in certain situations, yet I never stutter when I speak.  I don't know if that is because of how diligently I rehearse to avoid any stuttering or just that I am naturally comfortable talking about the knowledge I have learned across my life.

I give a speech on Sunday in Hershey, PA.  I made sure to write it well before the deadline and of course I have to edit it 2 days before the speech.  Developing eye contact and integrating my audience into a speech is one of the key ways that I find success when I speak.  A huge reason why I finish my speeches well before my deadline is so that I can develop that level of familiarity with my speech so that I do not have any risk of stuttering.

But things happen and I understand that.  I'm just frustrated when I have to make last minute edits, as everyone else does, but the most important thing is not to get upset about it and just work extra hard to regain that familarity.

Look towards the greater good.  The greater good here is to inspire people the way they deserve to be inspired.  That's why I'm cutting this blog short today.  These people on Sunday deserve the effort they were going to get with my original speech.  They still deserve that same delivery even though I had to make a last minute change.  It's my job to make that happen.  I'll let you know how it goes!

In my vigilant attempt to actually update this daily, I decided to reward myself for applying to 4, 5, 6 (I've lost count) jobs so far today.

The more I have been thinking through what I have developed with Determination, it makes the most sense to have a full-time job that I can grow in and let my speaking be an outside-of-work activity.  The stress of trying to continually find speaking engagements in order to have a steady income is going to become a miserable experience.  Fact remains that the material that comprises my speaking career has driven me to succeed in all the ways I have thus far in life.  I would hate to taint that natural desire by creating the pressure of a freelance, commission-based career.

In time, that most definitely might be fun, but the joy of that career will come after I will hopefully get myself established.  The more I'm thinking about it now, what better way to establish myself than to find a full-time job that I want to grow and ascend in for multiple years.

Now that I have been diligently searching for jobs again, I am finding career positions that sound intriguing.  I'm finding myself applying for these jobs with hope and anticipation that my cell phone rings with an unrecognized area code in the Maryland-DC metro area.

The best thing for me to do is just continue with this diligent effort I have discovered until someone finally replies to one of my application submissions and recognizes everything that I can offer.  As easy as it is to feel like no one is ever going to call and offer you an interview, it is vitally important to remain positive.  The attitude you embrace and carry yourself with reveals a lot about your confidence, and confidence dictates success more than anything else.

I know that I have every reason to be confident.  It's just a matter of time at this point.  I better help the process along though by stopping the blog for today and getting back to the job search results still waiting for me.  Plenty of applications still to go...

About 3 years ago, when I began the process of getting my license, I had to go to a rehabilitation driving specialist to determine what adaptive equipment I needed for my car in order to drive.  It took a while to get the state to pay for my adaptive equipment and then get the equipment installed inside my car, but I had remembered that this driving instructor taught me how to parallel park in the matter of 30 seconds.

I realized that instead of arguing with my parents and getting into heated discussions as we guessed on how to parallel park rhthat the best thing to do would be to pay for an hour with my driving instructor again, with my mom in the car, so that both of us could learn this simple method of parllel parking.  What is this breakthrough method you may ask?

Hard Right, Straight Back, Hard Left.

Drive up and line your back wheel to the front of the space and position your vehicle about two feet from the space.  Put the car in reverse and turn the wheel hard right until you see the middle of the back of the space.  Go straight back until you are in the space fully and then simply turn your wheel hard to the left to line yourself against the curb.  Pull up if need be.  (Luckily for me I have a small car and fitting into the full space given for a driving test will not be an issue in the least.)

So I went for that driving lesson Monday night, and sure enough my mom was amazed at how easy parallel parking was.  I hadn't done it at all since I was taught the method, which I had forgotten, three years ago.  I parked my car 3 times in the matter of 5 minutes.

The most reassuring thing was that my instructor told me how much I had improved and that if I drive the way I did with him on my driver's test that I would pass and get my license. Whew...And only a few more hours to log behind the wheel before my learner's permit log is complete.  Thatll give me time to practice this parallel parking and backing into a space manuevers a few times and then go get my license before the end of the month maybe!

Independence is almost complete for me.  Now to figure out where I want to take myself.  It might be nice to finally move away from my hometown I have lived in since I was born...but that's another post for another date that will surely come AFTER I GET MY LICENSE =)

Living life means getting as much out of it as you possibly can, overflowing yourself with life if you will.  How else are you supposed to continue growing in life unless you find new experiences to add onto the ones that already comprise and consume your life?

The more you add into your life, the more you have to balance.  I find that I'm happiest when I find new things to do and experience, but maintaining grip on the life I have been living in addition to the new experiences can get kind of hectic.

Life is constantly a balancing act.  At this point in my life I have distinct goals that I'm reaching towards and, while working towards those goals is fulfilling, there is a lot to be said for just having fun-- mini golf or bowling outings, trips to the zoo or just a walk around the neighborhood.

Finding new experiences and adding in those doses of relaxation help redirect your focus on your goal, but take time away from pursuing that goal in each day.  The more you add into your life, the more important it is to find a way to balance everything over time.  I may not get through everything I wanted to get through today or over the last three days, but that just means I'll have to catch up on it by the end of the week.

Here's a concrete example for you: my blog.  I have posts that come up daily, but most of the time they are late.  I know what I want to write about, but I also know that I can always find time to sit at my computer and type.  I can't always have time to go see a friend who I haven't seen in 8 years in town for fireworks or go out on some random adventure with my dad or spontaneously fly to Chicago to surprise one of my closest friends.

Each of those are life experiences.  I would rather live life and then come back to my blog are summarize what I experienced and what I learned instead of denying myself an opportunity to do something spontaneous or rare because I placed a personal obligation on myself to actually update a blog regularly.  Fact remains, it still gets updated, and if I never said anything about posting multiple blogs at a time and changing the date, you probably never would have noticed.

With that said, I have 2 or 3 more blogs to write to balance and fulfill my responsibility since talking, connecting and meeting up with a friend who I wasn't close to at all in high school, getting a free slurpee on 7/11 at 7-Eleven and learning to parallel park all have been spontaneous experiences that have occured over the past few days.

Now get out and find some experiences of your own.  One thing I can promise you is that my blog will be here tomorrow, but the experience you are putting off may be a one-time opportunity.  You owe it to yourself to live it up!