What's Up, Homies?

Hey y'all… for some reason I feel like sharing a bit of a life update. I am in an English class right now and we are always talking about writing and I often think about writing blog posts, but I just don’t ever think about it outside of those 5 seconds sitting in class. But, here she goes. Btw... there are pics at the end. Thought I would let you know to throw some suspense in there. 

So I don’t know how many of y’all know what I was up to this past summer. I told people where I was going and what I was doing but I was pretty quiet on social media sites (outside of snapchat) throughout the summer so if you weren’t told you may have never been informed. So, I signed on as a salesman for a pest control company. After changing my mind more than once about where I was going to go to sell door-to-door I finally settled on going to Nashville for the summer. I was pretty darn jacked to go out to Tennessee and spend my summer out there. After school got out the first week of May I got to go home to Kuna for maybe a couple days before I had the great blessing of driving ALL THE WAY to Nashville by myself. Driving 25+ hours by yourself isn’t necessarily fun, however it is quite relaxing and gives you great time to ponder about life and enjoy the company of your thoughts and my boy Jesus. I left on Saturday evening and drove to my sister Elsina’s house in Utah, then got up on Sunday and drove 16 straight hours through the awful wasteland of southern Wyoming and Nebraska all the way to Kansas City where I rolled in at 12:30am, and then drove another 8+ hours to Nashville on Monday. Talk about a TRIP! Thankfully on Monday I had a teammate who was caught up with me in Kansas City driving in front of me with a radar detector, so we cut off a substantial amount of time while safely avoiding any sort of speeding violation! But still, it was awfully long.

We got to Nashville and it was sick. It seemed like a pretty rad place and we were all excited to get out to work! Selling door-to-door is an interesting job. I remember my first couple weeks were basically just a rerun of the beginning of my mission. When you first get out on your mission you basically are just lost and have no idea how to talk to people about the gospel and have moments where you just crash and burn. Well, that’s exactly the same beginning to door-to-door sales! My first couple weeks I had people all day long tell me something that just had me at a loss for words and caused me to just say, “Well, I hope you have a wonderful day!” and walk off their doorstep! It was basically every door actually… not gonna lie. Another thing about the early days of a mission is that each and every day is sooooooo long and you are just counting down the minutes until you are done. Same thing with sales. And then you get home and you realize that you are going to hit the sack soon and just have to wake up and do it all over again the next day. There is just no break!!!! It was literally a nightmare that you can’t escape! At least a mission is uplifting…. but there ain’t no upliftment with sales. It just breaks you and makes you really think about what you are doing with your life. However, you start to get in the flow of the job and it just becomes life for you. Is it ever fun? HECK NO. But its bearable and becomes slightly less of a nightmare. The worst is when you literally start having nightmares about selling pest control! I remember starting to have dreams about selling that crap and freaking out because I felt like I couldn’t escape it or get a break from it. Even after you get into the flow of it, it still seems like a living hell sometimes. Quite honestly it was the most difficult mental challenge I have ever had to face. Not to go into details about what all went on to protect people and the company… but we were placed into a terrible situation with little hope to succeed from the get go. Plus, Nashville turned out to be a very difficult market to sell in. So it was honestly just brutal trying to sell day after day. However, I am thankful for the opportunity I had to go out there. I learned a ton about myself and what I want in life. One thing I had to continually practice was the skill of overcoming mental blocks. There were days when I hadn’t sold at all in a couple days and I would be out knocking doors on a muggy evening just dead tired physically, mentally, and emotionally with seemingly no hope to sell an account after already knocking for 7 hours in that neighborhood that day. But in those moments I had to make a decision. Will I quit now and give in to my weakness? Or will I keep going to prove to myself that I can overcome my mental barrier? I would usually keep going. And then when that happened I would usually get really really really close to a sale but the stupid person just wouldn’t sign my stupid ipad!!!!! When that happens when you are already just broken down and it is the worst thing ever. Sometimes I would just go out off their lawn, crouch down on bended knees, rip my hat off, rub my hands through my hair and say a few choice words quietly before I stagger on to the next door. It was honestly so frustrating to work for probably over a dozen hours working your butt off and to not have made a single penny for your labor only to get SOOOO DANG CLOSE but still get nothing. It was far more emotionally taxing and difficult than anything I ever experienced on my mission. I honestly can’t thinkt of ever being as frustrated with how difficult missionary work was in West Texas than I would get quite often selling pest control. But, luckily I was a pro at getting last door sales! I can’t even count the amount of times that it was getting dark and I knew it was time to go pick up my car partners but had just one more door to knock before I called it quits and sold the person. It got to a point where my team lead would text me at like 8:00 with only about 15 mins to go and would tell me to work my last door magic to spank in a sale! And its funny that I usually would text him 20 minutes later telling him that I sold somebody on my last door. I guess I was rewarded for my hard work sometimes!

After working for a couple months I started to think more seriously about what was best for me and my life at the time. It was clear that my summer was not going as hoped for (as was nobody else’s on my team) and I was facing some other challenges as well. I had made the decision and was given the opportunity to run track this year here at Utah State. I had taken a bit of a break from training and was ready to get back into it about a month into my summer. However, literally the day after I committed myself to start training again I started to feel pain in my foot. I thought nothing of it that day until I got out of bed the next morning to some good stiffness and soreness. I immediately knew I got hit with a case of plantar fasciitis. Sure enough, I got into the podiatrist later that week and my self diagnosis was confirmed. So for those of you unfamiliar, your plantar fascia is the tendon that runs along the bottom of your foot from your heal to the ball of your foot. Sometimes because of this reason or that reason the tendon gets inflamed right at the heal and it tightens up the tendon along your midfoot and leads to scar tissue build up along your foot and up into your arch. Usually you can get it under control pretty quickly, but then you will deal with it on and off for a long extended period of time. Well, as a door-to-door salesman I was kind of on my feet all day every day so I could never really let it rest. I got in to see a podiatrist as soon as I could once I felt the pain and ended up receiving a series of 3 steroid shots into my heal that did absolutely nothing besides dull the pain for a few days. So there was a waste of about $500. Shoutout to Mom and Dad for picking up those payments. But after more than a month or so of dealing with irritation in my foot and not being able to train I knew I had to seriously contemplate whether or not to leave and get home to rest.

On top of the issues with my foot I was dealing with many other unfortunate circumstances that added much to my decision. I won’t go into any of the other dealings I had in front of me to protect everyone involved, but I was in sort of a mess. I had many long phone calls with my parents while sitting in the picnic area of my apartment complex out in the muggy heat of Nashville listening to the birds and crickets chirp and the frogs croak late at night. Long story short, I decided one Saturday that I was done and ready to go home and that I would be leaving the next day to start the LOOONG drive home. I was not looking forward to having the necessary conversations I had to have and the phone calls I had to make. But luckily everyone was very understanding and supportive of my decision, which was a HUGE relief after hearing about what some other kids went through when they decided to go home. I can definitely say that just trying to be a cooperative and understanding person and portraying good character through everything throughout the summer helped me a bunch when I decided to go home. It seemed to lighten the news a bit for everyone. But anyway, I felt so incredibly relieved when I finally made my decision. I felt the weight of the world just lift off my shoulders and float right on away the second I made up my mind. It’s almost like Jesus is real or something.

So just when you thought that I had my big break and got away from everything, let me tell you the consequences. Well, as a salesman that is paid off of strictly commission on accounts that are paid throughout the year, I didn’t get paid on everything upfront. For each of my accounts sold I would only receive a certain amount upfront and then the rest on backend checks later in the year. I was basically able to pay for my living expenses out in Nashville with my upfront pay, so I was basically left with nothing when I decided to come home, and by coming home before I finished my contract I forfeited all of my backend commission which was thousands of dollars. I definitely accounted for this throughout my process of deciding to come home, but I ultimately had to jump ship and cut my losses and become friends with the lovely student loans. It kinda sucks when you have plans to make enough money to be able to pay for school and everything for the school year upfront in cash and have enough to last you the rest of the year…. and then find yourself sitting there with only a few weeks until school and having less than $100 in your bank account (and that’s because your parents bail you out to help you get home because you have no money to pay for gas or anything). So I was super happy when my student loans came through and had money to pay for my life.

The rest of my summer was fun and such an emotional and mental relief. I was able to get away from the toxicity of my job in Nashville and was able to let myself unwind and figure life out for a few weeks. I was able to get into a trusted physical therapist who I had worked with before to get my foot actually treated. I was able to spend time with some of my friends and actually have a bit of enjoyable time to end my summer. I remember certainly not feeling like myself towards the end of my stay in Nashville. I had a friend tell me that he saw a picture of me and thought that I looked empty and not like the Reed he knew and almost reached out to me to tell me to get out of there (he told me this a few weeks after). I even remember looking at myself in my car mirror before I walked into my sister’s house in Utah on my drive home and hoping that she wouldn’t notice my empty and worn appearance. It took about a week or so of being home to feel like myself again, but I got there.

So here I am at school. Life is wonderful……. yet super confusing at the same time. I am kind of in a limbo state right now where I am still in a position of uncertainty about many things and yet starting to figure life out and what the future holds. One of the biggest things for me is the idea of being almost 22 years old and still having no direct course I want to take in life. I sit in class most days just hating general education and wanting to get on with school and my education, but then thinking how I don’t know what I want to study/pursue as a career. So that’s been fun. Still working on that. But sadly it seems to be getting worse every day so maybe I am not working on it well enough!

Like I said earlier, I am running track here. The boys team doesn’t have very many people returning (especially in the sprints/hurdles group) so there are a lot of us freshman (out of high school or rm’s) that are all here trying to earn a spot. Not many of us have a guaranteed spot so we are all trying to prove ourselves. I will say that it has been a bit of a challenge. After not being a competitive athlete for a few years it has been difficult to get myself to want to push myself physically like a high performing athlete again and have a competitive edge. I remember in high school I would complete a workout and feel satisfaction for having pushed myself and knowing I was getting better. However when I started training recently I just felt tired and worn out from my workout. It really made me question if I wanted to continue on with track or not. I felt like I had just lost the spark and that I just needed to move on in life. We are starting with only being allotted 8 hours of workouts a week and I feel like its just so time consuming….. and we haven’t even started our allotted 20 hour weeks. So I started with having some doubtful thoughts about it all even from a time perspective. However, we are in our third week now and I am starting to get into it much more. I am starting to feel that satisfaction and drive again. It definitely helps actually working out with other people as well. It had been forever since I was able to practice every day with people to push me and run with. All the workouts I had done since high school had been solo and it is a very different feeling running alongside others. Which speaking of working out with others, I am able to keep up far better than I thought I would. After dealing with injuries for so much of the time that I have been home from my mission I came into this school year feeling as out of shape as ever. But somehow my body has just pushed right along and been able to do the workout and keep up with everyone with ease. Our workout have honestly been fairly light and nothing too intense, but still. I feel strong and capable and have a lot of optimism for my ability to earn a spot on the team!

I have still been dealing with injuries, however. I legitimately spend more time in the training room than I do at our workout (not including weights). My foot was still bothering me for a while. I had been getting treatment on it a few days a week after practice up unit later last week. We decided to let it try to do some healing on its own because it has been feeling better, and I have hardly had any irritation at all the last few workouts. I credit that to my diligence doing my exercises every day to help it heal and strengthen! Right as practices were starting I was starting to feel some pain in my hip flexor, which seems to be a pretty typical thing for me. I have dealt with that basically my whole athletic career. I then started having IT band issues at the beginning of last week but I have been diligent in making sure I get it rolled out and treated after practice. Ugh, it just seems to be one thing after the other. And this is all on top of my months of recovery after tearing an adductor muscle after I got home from my mission. But I figure that it’s all just part of the gig. I feel like being injured comes with being a college athlete so I can expect more in the future (although I am really hoping to get healthy and stay healthy)! Anyway, so that’s that!

But, life is just fun. I thoroughly enjoy being here at Utah State and would highly recommend it to anyone and everyone! It is just the place to be. I love my roommates, friends, and everyone else that I am surrounded by. Utah State just pulls in quality people and has such a positive and friendly atmosphere that tops any other university in the area along with such an awesome culture that makes life so incredibly great while attending. If you are in college and not attending Utah State……. you need to transfer and get your buns here asap. You will never regret it!

God bless ya!

The Nashville North team at The Lost Cajun... SUPER YUMMY but not enough food for what you pay!

Sometimes you just have to entertain yourself while on the doors. Pretty sure I remember the dude that lives there come look through the window as I took this picture. Kinda awkward but I had no shame.

I swear on my life that Carrie Underwood drove past me right here at this exact location. Best moment of my life.

A "bucket" sale is when you lower your prices past a certain point. We were only allowed a certain percentage of our sales to be in the bucket. But on free bucket day, we could bottom out our prices and not have them go into our bucket! I spanked in 4 that day (but 2 of them cancelled).....

When your team lead takes everyone to the apartment pool instead of working for the first part of the day you get all the relaxing you can get. Yes, I got super sunburned.

J-Crane had a spider bite... or ingrown hair... or some other sort of growth... still not sure. Good night.

The best picture I got of the Nashville sky line. Wish I could have gotten a better one.

Saw Carry Underwood live at the Grand Ole Opry......... I still get the feels thinking about that night.

4th of July in downtown Nashville was nuts! Literally over 200,000 people in a very small area!

Nobody was ready for the picture except for Logan and Chad. We had a good time downtown!

From the roof of a building during the CMA Music Fest weekend.

Bike riding with Ridge was a good way to enjoy the end of summer!

We were just too dang lit for the 80's dance.

Julia and I met at a dance party and run into each other all the time whenever dancing and a party are combined.... very few people go as hard as us.

I guess Peter was the only one that made the frame... I could have sworn more people were in this pic.

Some of my homies at the first home football game!