Talks with Bernie

So I thought I was learning a lot about life when I was out on the bookfield, but tonight, I got a new experience. I have been getting home at like 9:30 ish and usually Bernie is still up. We talk about the day shortly and then I try to ask him a question about his experiences. Tonight I wanted to know which summer was his toughest. He told me his third because his father committed suicide right before he went out for the summer. I can imagine that incident would have some measurable effects on one's thoughts during the day.

It gets crazier. I met a guy today that told me how he almost sold books but didn't. He then proceeded to list all the reasons why he couldn't sit down with me because he had no money and he was on food stamps. It makes me wonder if he would have been in that same situation if he had sold books... Interesting. After I told Bernie that story he told me that his mother had MS and died when he was in high school. He could have received food stamps and money from the government but chose not to. He worked at his uncle's hardware store for super long hours; some nights he worked until midnight. This was all through high school. Most of his jobs were just as tough after that. When working for the railroad he had to drive nails with a sledge hammer all day in Montana. Some days it would be 120-130 degrees and they didn't have water out there. THEN, after work they would ask if anyone wanted to work overtime unloading 150 pound barrels of railroad spikes. Of course Bernie agreed. He told me that he was always wanting or looking for extra money and that's why he always chose the crazy jobs.

After all this he told me that the toughest experience of his life was his divorce. He had two children with his previous marriage and two boys now. After these stories he told me he has sleep apnea and is only able to sleep about 6-8 minutes at a time. When he does get sleep he has like leg twitch things which wake him up from his sleep.

All that to say that I thought I had kind of a crappy day and it was hard. Then I talked to Bernie. I did not write this blog for judgment or to make you feel sympathetic for Bernie because I do not think he wants any. I wrote only so that I could have a record to say that no matter what I'm going through, it's no where near as tough as his life thus far. What an incredible man.

Halfway!

While the video is uploading.

I did a video blog in lower quality, but it is still taking forever...

So here we go, this weekend is the 4th of July! Wow! Independence day is here! I really like Jamestown and our new HQ. It's so tight because it is home of the world's largest Buffalo. (Also including 3 albino Buffalo).

On another random topic, I found out about a sweet animal today. It's kind of like a ground hog. It is called a Hyrax. It's a rodent-like animal from African and the Middle East. It could be in close competition with my favorite animal the otter. We'll see. Here's a quick shout out to things that the bookfield makes me appreciate a whole lot more:

Snickers

Reese's PB cups

(Basically any candy)

Ice Cream

Parents

Friends from school

Sleep

Rain Jackets

Shelter (especially when it rains or is hot outside haha)

The cafeteria (even though it may not seem like the most quality food, at least it contains mass quantities of unlimited eating supplies)

frisbee

sitting doing nothing

time

the internet

my car

All that to say, that I have been blessed that I can even make a list of things I am th

ankful for. So many times during the summer I catch myself wishing for more when really I have so much in my life that I take advantage of or just don't appreciate enough. This really helps put it all into focus for me.

Slacking

Yeah, that pretty much describes my blogging. Sorry guys. I know you've been hanging on the edge of your seat wondering about my latest door to door story.

As you all know (I think), I moved to Jamestown, ND. I am staying with a Southwestern Alumni named Bernie Satrom (sat-trum). He's awesome! His house is really cool too. He sold for three summers and his second and third had teams of 5 or more people. His life is pretty much what I want mine to look like when I get to be his age. He has an amazing house. I loooove it. The location overlooks the river and it's all custom built. I am going to try to do a photo walkthrough tomorrow if I have time.

This week has treated me well. I sold a lot of handbooks which are our main product. These are how we really start to make money. The kids books are easy to sell, but do not yield a great deal of profit like the handbooks do. I did get a little distracted and distressed on Friday, but I'm slowly getting back on the right path. I can't believe it's the midpoint of the summer already. It's going fast. In a way I'm glad, but in another way I'm looking at all the work I need to do in order to improve and get what I want out of the summer. I need to go to sleep. perhaps I'll write more tomorrow. paz

An Airport Vacation

Here's a picture of my new home for the next 8 hours. I thought it was going to be a curse. I missed my flight from ATL to MN by about 10 minutes this morning. They told me that my later flight to Theif River Falls would be fine, and that I would have plenty of time to get to it. Well my flight from Minneapolis to TRF was at 1:00. I got the airport at 12:50 and arrived at gate F. The other gate where my flight was was A8. So I ran across the airport, but did not make it.

I was a little discouraged because I was supposed to finish up some work in TRF and get about half way to my new HQ by tomorrow. Turns out my new flight is at 9:30 and there's a connection in Hibbing, MN. Instead of feeling like I'm wasting time or wishing I would have made my flight I'm simply enjoying this time off. I've uploaded all the pictures and videos I should have uploaded during school today. The internet was $7.95 and it is super fast. It's so awesome for uploading pictures and videos. I also uploaded a lot of new pictures to flickr. I got to talk to Tyler and Marie-Claire (finally)! The best part is, I still have 4 hours! It's such a cool vacation. I'm going to watch a few movies, one of which is a dynamic reading, aka, speed reading, program. I'm really excited.

The airport is nice and I'm glad that I missed the flight because now I can just relax a little bit more before jumping back into the bookfield. Thanks for reading!

Video uploads suck

So I wanted to keep doing video posts, but they take so freaking long to upload. Anyway, I just finished my 5th week of selling! Next week is the half way point. I can't believe it. Let me try to not get ahead of myself though. This week was strange. My grandfather died on Wednesday morning so I had to fly to South Carolina on Friday for the visitation and funeral on Saturday. It kind of threw me off because in the book field, it can really throw off your momentum to be off schedule. Hopefully though it won't affect me very much.

I arrived here in Union, SC and felt a lot of mixed feelings. I felt happy to see everyone and happy to be away from the book field, but also sad because of the occasion. I can't tell you how many times I've heard people tell me that it was great to see me, but sorry that it had to be under these circumstances. I know that is the polite thing to say, but it's almost as if I don't want to talk about it.

Also, we are moving to Jamestown, ND which will be freaking amazing. We basically get a new summer. Austin and I are staying with a guy who sold books and actually has some awards that he won up on the wall. He lives in a lakehouse and we will not have to drive 2.5 hours every sunday at 6 AM. I can't wait! Anyway, sorry I haven't been writing much, there really isn't much to tell. I have some pictures and stories, but eh nothing too crazy. Anyway, I will write again soon, possibly tonight because it may get boring around here.

Week 4 and my "problems" realization

Sorry this took so long.

Haircut

Here you go. I'll blog more later.

BEST DAY EVER!

No seriously, I had my best day in sales today. I had 7 customers for 87 units (units are $5 so, $435). If we get 100 units in a day we have what's called a burger day. Basically that means we can buy ourselves a burger before we go home instead of eating regular food. I worked from7:09 until 10:01 tonight trying to get to 100, but couldn't do it. Regardless, today was fun. I learned a lot.

During the morning, I was getting frustrated because I had about 4-5 immediate no's at the door. As I prayed to God in my frustration and vented, he led me to the next house. I had driven by this house before because it didn't look like it would be a very good prospect. I knocked on the door and a little girl named Hannah answered. She went and got her mother who was overweight, breathing with a lot of effort and a cigarette in her hand. I went through my presentation expecting her to give me some type of money objection, but she merely got up and got cash. She brought be the money and asked about buying more at the end of the summer if she could save up the money. It was a huge lesson of not judging the measure that parents will go to in order to educate and care for their children. April was the mom's name and I commend her for her hard work to earn money all to go to her children's books. It was an awesome experience. That one sale made my whole day better because I could really see true love. It was selfless and honest. I loved it. The rest of the day I simply embraced the "no's" because with this job if you dwell on the NO's you'll go craaaazy.

Another realization God gave me was that this job is fun because we only spend quality time with the cool families. If you think about it, the negative families we meet, aka, the ones that say no, are only in contact with us for about 1 minute at the door. The rest of the day we spend about 20 minutes with each family just getting to know them and hanging out. That's why I love this job. Yesterday and today have been awesome days for me because of the lessons I'm learning. I'm going to do a seven step outline and post it on here tomorrow. For now I realllly need sleep so peace!

Cokes and Russians

Today was a strange day. I went to some new turf called Erskine and McIntosh. Apparently there are several Russian families that live in the area and the schools have Russian as their main foreign language. I ran into a neighborhood of Russians today and it was awesome. There were about 6 houses that all had Russian families. The first one I talked to said that her relatives lived down the road. I started trekking down this dirt road and discovered four enormous houses. We use names a lot in our business by saying, "Oh well you probably know ______, and they just picked these up to." Basically it's the herd mentality I guess. Associating and acting upon decisions made by others. It also gives us credibility. Anyway, 2 families bought and I have to catch up with 3 of the other families. It should go well.


I also have this line where I say, "If this doesn't seem like something you would use then you can definitely just kick me out and give me a coke." People laugh every time. Strangely enough, today I got 4 cokes! It was awesome! Usually people just laugh, but today they actually gave them to me! It was crazy. Anyway I'm going to bed. Good night!

Why worry?

Well week two is over so there's nothing I can do to change it. I shouldn't think about it anymore! Today was awesome, I got to sit down with Travis and really get to bottom of why I'm not working my hardest. I'm here, I'm going through the motions, but my mind and my heart are totally thinking about being other places. I want to be on the beach, in Tennessee, in Kentucky, anywhere but Thief River Falls, Minnesota. I realized that this kind of attitude was just focusing on all the negative things and therefore my actions were suffering from them.

Travis explained it like Asbury College. There are some crazy rules, and if you focus only on the negative ones like no dancing, required chapel, curfew, and other things of that nature then yes the college isn't very fun. However if you simply accept those things and then turn to what those things are actually doing for you like spiritual vitality and academic excellence, haha then it gets better. My freshman was just me complaining about how I didn't like it and how I wanted to transfer. I didn't have many close friends because I wouldn't allow myself to get close. I was what was keeping others away. The same thing is happening now. God is calling me to work hard this summer, to be an example for Matt and the other first years, to fully rely on him to take care of me financially, physically and emotionally. All I have to do is go out and try to actually help families and other people and forget about myself. God already knows everything that's going to happen to me this summer and his plans are in my best interests. So why not go out and embrace those things and enjoy this week to the best of my ability. I'm going to be praying more and looking for positive things all throughout the day. Perhaps I'll write a blog about them.

Today was a great day for learning. I'm going to start enjoying the time I have here instead of wishing it all away. Pray for me this week because this change will not come easily or quickly. However, if I keep persisting success becomes inevitable. Just like knocking on doors. Peace out.

I was looking for a picture for this blog and found this other blog. It's a great summary.

Some days are harder than others

Sometimes I don't want to go to work. Some days I really don't want to walk across this bridge. And some days I don't even want to get out of bed

There are days when I have trouble with everything

But every day is progress. Every interaction is important

It doesn't matter if some steps are harder than others as long as I keep making them. I know I'm headed in the right direction ;)

source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lachlanhardy/221868712/