Things Change

Things Change 

  By Alex W. Miller 

For most people, graduation is an exciting day--the
culmination of years of hard work. My graduation day...
was not.

I remember that weekend two years ago. Family and
friends had flown in from across the country to watch
our class walk across that stage. But like everyone
else in my graduating class, I had watched the economy
turn from bad to worse my senior year. We graduates had
degrees, but very limited prospects. Numerous
applications had not panned out and I knew that the
next day, when my lease ended, I would no longer have a
place to call home.

The weeks ahead weren't easy. I gathered up everything
I couldn't carry and put it into storage. Then, because
I knew my small university town couldn't offer me any
opportunities, I packed up my car and drove to Southern
California to find work. But what I thought would take
a week dragged into two, and then four, and 100 job
applications later, I found myself in the exact same
spot as I was before. And the due date to begin paying
back my student loans was creeping ever closer.

You know that feeling when you wake up and you are just
consumed with dread? Dread about something you can't
control--that sense of impending failure that lingers
over you as you hope that everything that happened to
you thus far was just a bad dream? That feeling became
a constant in my life. 

Days felt like weeks, weeks like months, and those many
months felt like an unending eternity of destitution.
And the most frustrating part was no matter how much I
tried, I just couldn't seem to make any progress.

So what did I do to maintain my sanity? I wrote.
Something about putting words on a page made everything
seem a little clearer--a little brighter. Something
about writing gave me hope. And if you want something
badly enough ... sometimes a little hope is all you
need!

I channeled my frustration into a children's book.
'Beyond the River' was the story of an unlikely hero
featuring a little fish who simply refused to give up
on his dream.

And then one day, without any sort of writing degree or
contacts in the writing world--just a lot of hard work
and perseverance--I was offered a publishing contract
for my first book! After that, things slowly began to
fall into place. I was offered a second book deal.
Then, a few months later, I got an interview with The
Walt Disney Company and was hired shortly after.

The moral of this story is ... don't give up. Even if
things look bleak now, don't give up. Two years ago I
was huddled in my car drinking cold soup right out of
the can. Things change.

If you work hard, give it time, and don't give up,
things will always get better. Oftentimes our dreams
lie in wait just a little further upstream ... all we
need is the courage to push beyond the river.

Source: Inspirational Peak at:
http://www.inspirationpeak.com/cgi-bin/stories.cgi?record=152