I can think of two cataclysmic events in my life that have attributed to where I'm at now. The interesting thing though is that I'm not sure if both the events were a positive or negative thing.
The first event was my first real job when I was 15 at a lumberyard. I had to be up at 5:30 A.M. so I could get there on time and was expected to work just as hard as the other workers there. At first I absolutely detested the job and was pretty adamant that I was never going to go back once the summer was up. Towards the middle of the summer I started to enjoy going to work, there were a few people there who were incredibly intelligent beyond the world of lumber and thus was able to learn a lot from them. When the summer was up I had this real work ethic built up in me, as well as the knowledge of how to safely operate and work with a forklift. This proved to be invaluable after I graduated high school and blew a small inheritance on travel and alcohol. It put me in a situation that many people my age weren't as fortunate to have. Sure I had to be up early and bear the elements, but I was making 15 bucks an hour with a high school education.
This is where the uncertainty comes into play because I knew I could survive and live quite comfortably without the need to go to school so why bother? This has been the decision that's been niggling at me for almost two years now. On the one hand I made a promise to my parents that I would go to school, on the other I have no real interest in actually doing it. I had to put up with enough bullshit in high school and at work I was getting the recognition on the work I was doing and not how well I can punctuate a paragraph or solve some equation that I'll never see ever again. The fact of the matter is simple, I can survive working in lumberyards, I'm good at it and I kind of enjoy it. Is it what I want to do forever? Probably not, but is getting a piece of paper going to ensure that I do what I want? Well the chances are higher, but I've met enough college graduates who end up at some crappy desk job that eats away at their soul (something I can fully understand now). While my time in the lumberyard has instilled a very good work ethic and forced me to mature faster, as well as given me a more realistic view on the working force, it's also provided an "easy way out" so to speak.
So that's number one, number two (hehe) is a bit more bizarre, but it's the honest truth. OK so what's the number two (hehe) thing that's gone right/ wrong... the novel Trainspotting written by Irvine Welsh.
Many many moons ago a wide-eyed 16 year old version of me was in the bookstore looking for a new book to read. My dad had recently begun to talk to me about the movie Trainspotting, going so far as to making me watch the scene where Renton and Sick Boy were talking about their philosophies of life... then shooting a Skin Head's dog in the bollocks causing it to attack it's owner. I wasn't very intrigued by the scene, however as I was in the bookstore I saw the title and decided to give it a try. I was not aware at the time that the book was written in a Scottish dialect so my first read took some time, however I found myself entranced by this alternative way of thinking. I became... slightly obsessed with this book, getting everything else Irvine Welsh had written after (which wasn't as good) and trying to get into this man's psyche, as demented as it was. This was around the time that I really started to think of the world in a more cynical way, it was also when the word cunt entered my daily vocab. I found this deep sense of sincerity in Welshes' writing, brutally honest and abrasive, a sink or swim type of thinking, much like our own world.
I think upon first glance it's pretty easy to see that this book has had more of a negative effect on my life. However in our current age of people barely reading, the fact that a book had such a large effect on someone's life is truly a remarkable thing, for better or for worse.
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