One Miserable Night

Last night, after Becca and I broke up, I was up most of the night coughing, sweating, blowing my nose and taking trips to the bathroom to relieve myself. This being sick stuff really sucks! For the majority of the morning I tried to find a way to get to the doctors. I would have simply driven myself there but my fever had left me so weak and dizzy that I didn't dare get on my motorcycle. So I called up some friends, but they were either out of town or I couldn't get a hold of them, so I tried calling a cab. The trouble is that since I live so far away from the center of LA that most of the cab services don't range this far. I finally found one that did when my friend Jeff called me. He had gotten my message and even though he was on his way out of town he called up some other mutual friends and found someone who wasn't busy today and was able to help me out. So I canceled the cab--and I'm glad I did, and my friend David took me to the urgent care center, stayed with me and even filled out my paper work for me! The whole visit to the doctor's took about 4 hours, but he didn't complain the whole time. I am truly blessed to have the friends I have. 

Home Sick

Today I spent the whole day at home reading, not talking--even to people on skype (I chatted instead), and thinking about what I should do. My thoughts ran more or less like this: I have a whole day to do anything except (insert long list of things). I should really make use of that! So I read a book called "Rich Dad's Prophecy" that I stole from my dad's book shelf before I left, finished reading the second book I have by Donald Trump--one very self-important person I might add. I got half way through "Rich Dad's Prophecy when lunch rolled around and I decided to make lunch and work on a book that I've been thinking about. No I won't give out the title online! Someone in my massive audience might steal my idea, and then where would I be? But don't get too excited I bagged that idea when I realized I should check the status of my flights for my Christmas trip. Well, I looked but no one was giving me any indication of what was going on with them because apparently they were too far off to worry about... which started me worrying about them momentarily. Then did various necessary time wasters such as examining the glands in my throat practicing my cough. Until recently I haven't been practicing it much so I guess I'm a little under-conditioned for it. Now I'm a little sore and I don't want to cough anymore. "COACH! TAKE ME OUT!!" And now I'm writing another entry for you my reader(s). I should be finishing my first post or doing something else productive, but I just can't bring myself to do it. I just want to be better and I want to get out of this rat-race, get to Seattle for Christmas, see Becca, and not let anything get in my way.

PS~for those of you who are wondering: yes, we in LA are having a horrible time with our winter storms as well. As a matter of fact it was raining until almost noon. In fact we have had so much weather that all the ski resorts in the mountains around here are open already--which I don't have to tell you has created such confusion because people aren't used to having so many to choose from this early in the season. The panic is widespread verging on stupidity. For all of you deeply disturbed skiers out there trying to decided: my prayers go with you.

Returning Empty Handed

I'm sorry but this post is not the promised continuation of the last post. I have gotten myself very busy since the last time I blogged. As a result, I will have to catch you up on a number of things later on (not this post).

Today, was an interesting and trying day for me. I am now working for a sales/promotion company as an independent distributor. This means that I am technically my own business, but that happens to only contract for Sports Marketing Inc. What I like about the company is the opportunity that I have to be mentored by some excellent people. Honestly, the quality of the people I work with is the reason I chose to work there. 

I am doing well there now. Not surprisingly I've learned the basics of pitching/sales rather quickly and I am simply refining my technique at this point. At the end of my first week I was "setting the pace" for the promotion that I was working on. This means that I was selling the most Dodger ticket packages of any of the other distributors at the office. On Tuesday morning, one of the managers at the office called all the distributers into the office and explained that some people would have to pick up the pace and sell more pieces or having them work for Sports Marketing would be a waste of time for them and for the company. She then went on to say that people who were interested in moving up should be watching me because I was next in line to be promoted. As you can imagine, that was a nice little confidence boost. Fortunately, and unfortunately I have been identified as a leader at the company now. I say unfortunately simply because I am not a leader yet. Even though I am only a distributor, yesterday I was actually invited to be present for a meeting on the development of what will eventually become a brand new division for the company. I was also assigned to train a new employee. Normally only managers or assistant managers train new employees--or at the very least a person who is an account manager. Having me train this new person was kind of unheard of since I am still going through the training myself in a way. The only problem was that I was not able to work the field myself as much and as a result I didn't make as much money. I wasn't too worried about that though. I figured I just had an off day. Today I had another person to train: this time someone who had actually been working longer than me. They had been trained by some other people before, but were having some problems because no one had broken the pitch down for her piece by piece and helped her correct some bad habits she had begun to develop. It wasn't hard but I was able to get her back on track. The bad things was that do to a combination of me mis-judging some customers and some genuinely bad locations for selling I ended up not selling a single piece of merchandise. I did every thing that I had tried to do right, but the results simply weren't there today. I hurt a bit to think about how I had fumbled opportunities but in the end I know that it was bound to happen eventually. Everyone goes home empty at some point. If I never had a day like today I would never know what it feels like to handle the frustration, disappointment and confusion of coming home carrying merchandise instead of money.