“Just wanted to say thanks for the inspiration. Your Facebook post yesterday reminded me what I need to be happy. Hope you know your actions do inspire others.”

Two weeks ago, I posted a Facebook status that read, “I just realized that it’s now been over a year since I left my last job - Oct. 29 to be exact. It was one of the best decisions of my life. Be the change you want to see in your life!” The following day, I received a text message from a friend. The text was the quote that you read at the top of this blog post.

Doing a quick recall, I can probably safely say that it was the most humbling thing I’d ever been told in my life. Why? Because I’m just a regular guy. And as your average Joe, rarely do I feel like I influence others; let alone inspire them. In this instance, last year, I had a legitimate distaste for my job and it was overflowing into my personal life and ruining it. I had to make a change. Most people would never have quit their job like I did; without another job lined up and essentially without a plan, but as it turns out, I sort of even shocked myself to find out that I’m not like most people. And as it turns out, I was told by many coworkers that they envied me for my decision, and in this case, I even inspired at least one other person to make a change for the better in their life. And lastly, as it turns out, (I don’t know how to say this in a different way, so I’m just going to say this knowing full well that it’s going to make me sound like a conceited ass, so I apologize in advance for that), this wasn’t even the first time that I have been told by someone that I inspire them.

As most people who know me know, I was diagnosed with Stage II Hodgkin’s lymphoma on November 17, 2006. (Happy 5^th Anniversary, Worst Day of My Life!) The six or seven month journey that followed, I have been told, would become a bit of an inspirational tale to my friends and family, especially for those that had a front row seat to my life on a daily basis; and to maybe the ones of tens of people who potentially actually read the article that was written about me in the University of Oregon student paper and/or watched the interview I did on a local Eugene TV station.

Having been told that I inspire people on more than one occasion, I started to wonder what it is that makes someone like me “inspirational.” Personally, I have never really found myself to have a terribly great, inspiring story; and no offense, but nothing I’ve ever done in my life has been to try to inspire you. The conclusion that I came to is that the reason I don’t find myself inspirational but you maybe do is because I don’t do anything special at all. It’s my lack of trying to be someone that I’m not – special – that you think is commendable. Although I freely share my so-called “story” with others, I am not trying, and never have tried, to call attention to myself for the things you dub as “inspirational.” I just have an extreme willingness to tell you damn near anything about my life if you’re even remotely curious. With my close friends, quite frankly, I’m probably too willing. Ask any of them.

While I don’t find myself to be inspiring, if I’m going to be completely honest with myself, I will admit that I do find joy in knowing that I had a hand in positively influencing someone else’s decisions in life. Influencing someone is relatively easy though. All you have to do is tell someone your opinion of what they should do in a certain situation. If they take any part of what you told them into consideration, technically, you “influenced” them. Obviously, there are other forms of influence, but this is what comes to mind when I hear the word.

To me, there is a difference between influencing and inspiring. Inspiring may be a form of influencing, but influencing is not a form of inspiring. To inspire, you do not give advice; you do not tell anyone what you think they should do, or what you would do in their situation; you do not do anything out of your ordinary. To inspire, you simply go about your business as if no one is watching you. Why? Well, because 99.99% of the time, no one is watching. When you’re faced with adversity, eyes will suddenly start shifting in your direction and your 00.01% chance to shine arrives. We as a society have a natural curiosity about other people experiencing hardship. It’s why terrible TV shows like Jersey Shore and Keeping Up With The Kardashians are popular. The adversity they face are things like, “Why doesn’t my skin look more orange? I mean, I’ve gone tanning for hours every day,” or “How long do I have to stay married to this NBA player for that $17 million? He doesn’t even have a job right now!” But when regular folks like me are truly faced with real adversity, that’s when all eyes are on you, or at least the eyes of your friends and family.

For a long time, I convinced myself that people were only telling me that I inspire them because they were impressed that I simply hadn’t died from cancer. Seriously. I thought that. For some, maybe that’s true. Maybe that’s just what you tell someone when you don’t know what else to say about them having cancer. But for most, I think they really meant it, and recently, I finally started to believe it. It wasn’t so much because I was staring Death in the eyes and laughing maniacally right back in Its face unafraid (because that’s absolutely not what I was doing; I was keeping my head down and hoping I wasn’t going to puke at any given second), I was “inspiring” people in the simple way that I was just going about my business. Diagnosed with cancer as a junior in college with a part-time job and living away from home, I was supposed to drop everything and make my only priority in life to live. I didn’t realize it at the time, but apparently as a 20 year old, I decided that just living wasn’t good enough. “To Hell with your cancer,” right?

I wasn’t about to change my whole life for cancer. Looking back, that might have been a bit naïve, but I didn’t care. I wasn’t willing to make the sacrifices that would have made my life mediocre during the time I had cancer. Before I was diagnosed, I was having the time of my life. Living in a house with four of my best friends, going to Oregon football games, partying from “Hockey Tuesday” through Saturday on a regular basis, and yes, even going to school. I sort of enjoyed that too. After being diagnosed with cancer, I didn’t want any of that to change. I wasn’t about to lose it all. If you’ve read my other blog posts today, you probably have a good feel for that. Apparently, just doing what I wanted to do in order to be happy while fighting a life-threatening illness was enough to become inspirational. If you find that to be inspirational, I can’t really tell you how awesome that makes me feel. You merely watched me (hopefully in a non-creepy sort of way), and as I had no idea you were doing so, you admired how I handled my own personal adversity. That truly amazes me and I thank you for thinking that highly of me.

And if you don’t think that highly of me, that’s okay too. I wasn’t the one that said I was the inspiration in the first place.

Happy Anniversary.

Happy 4th Anniversary, Worst Day of My Life

11/17/2010

So now that I have pretty much blitzed you with just about all of the information I currently have regarding my life and cancer, I feel like I should preface this year’s thoughts with a disclaimer, haha.

As most of my good friends know, I am an open book. I rarely hesitate to say what is on my mind or state my opinion. And I am willing to share just about anything in my life if someone asks; or sometimes even if someone doesn’t ask. Today, if you chose to read/look at my many cancer-having-related posts, you probably now know this whether you wanted to or not, haha.

The intent of today, and every other anniversary to the worst day of my life, is my way of reflecting on the year that was while typically focusing on what my life has been like post-cancer. As I said earlier, I am an open book, and my thoughts, feelings, and ideas are spilling more and more into social media. I obviously use facebook, and I probably share even more random thoughts (albeit usually Duck football-related) on my Twitter account (SHAMELESS PLUG: Follow me at @ramckay3) where literally anyone in the world that has a computer and knows how to read can access it. I say all of this because in no way am I looking for pity, empathy, or sympathy. No, I don’t want someone to say “Man, look at how tough Andrew had it back then.” I am simply sharing what I probably am always subconsciously thinking about, and occasionally consciously thinking about.

Now, onto this year’s thoughts…

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11/17/2010

Here’s the other blog post I snagged off of my Myspace account. I literally have no reason to ever log back onto Myspace again other than to delete the account, I guess. Aaanyway, I wrote this two years ago. It basically summarizes 11/17/2006, the Inaugural Worst Day of My Life, and the weekend/ensuing weeks to follow. This post is pretty much peppered with sarcastic writing. Can I really do it any other way?

Lastly, BIG shout out to Andrew Czajkowski for asking me possibly the only question I will ever remember the exact date and setting in which it was asked.

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Today is November 17, 2011. It marks the 5th anniversary of the Worst Day of My Life. If you’re not sure what that is or why I have dubbed November 17th the Worst Day of My Life, please feel free to read all of things I post on this blog today. It will give you a lot of insight into the single most defining moment of my life and how my life has been affected since then.

One year ago from today, in a Facebook Note post, I wrote the following few paragraphs which describes my love/hate relationship with November 17th. What immediately follows is a blog post that I wrote on MySpace in 2007. Throughout the day, on Facebook, I posted more things I had written and reflected on. I will be doing the same on Tumblr today (because if you remember, I’m constantly expanding my social media connection to the world). It will culminate tonight with a brand new post or two about my thoughts on the past five years. So without further adieu, hopefully you enjoy reading (possibly again) as much as I actually enjoy re-reading, reminiscing, writing, and reflecting today.

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“Screw this. I’m bored. I’m retiring… from retirement.”

That’s basically what I thought to myself about three days after I arrived stateside from quite possibly the best 86 days of my life.

If you’ve read my last blog post, you know that I was miserable at my last job; you know that I felt like I was already stuck in a dead end job only two years after graduating college; and lastly, you know that I left my job on October 29, 2011. If you’ve read any of my other posts, you know that after three months of not working, I picked up and went to Europe for 86 days. It was the greatest experience of my life and unfortunately, probably a once in a lifetime opportunity (until real retirement, maybe). Probably never again will I ever be able to take three months off from work, go to another continent, spend time with family I barely know, backpack via plane, train, and automobile around to eight different countries halfway across the world from where I live, and meet a wide array of awesome – and some not-so-awesome – people from all over the world with all sorts of stories. Probably never again; that’s the theme here and it really sucks to face that reality…

Well, regardless, it was an amazing three months of my life. If you’ve been following along with the timeline of my life that is this blog, this is essentially where I’ve left you hanging: Back from Europe and now what? Returning stateside on May 3, 2011, I spent the next three months in my hometown, which I lovingly have nicknamed The ALB. [Note (that you probably don’t care about): There is currently an open debate amongst my friends about who originally named it The ALB, but I’d never heard it before I said it. And I originally didn’t even know I said it first. A friend told me I did; now she claims she made it up. Now there are older folks trying to claim they said it years before we ever said it. I never heard it, so I choose not to believe it. Regardless of who really did make it up, I have to give credit to my college buddy from Boise, who lovingly called his hometown The BOI. It’s where I got the inspiration.]

Right when I got back from Europe, it was pretty much smooth sailing with days consisting of sleeping in until noon or later, boredom, TV watching, internet surfing, job searching and seeing the same jobs on the same websites day in and day out, making fun of Lola (meaning “grandma” in Tagalog – the national language of The Philippines) and my Mom’s Filipino accent by repeating everything they say in an accent, making fun of my Dad’s hardcore addiction to ranch dressing and his limp due to his refusal to stop running regardless of injury, and hanging out with the two friends I have left in The ALB. Nights consisted of much of the same as the daytime activities; except on weekend nights, the hometown bar Game Time got thrown into the mix. Tuesdays were the highlight of the week when my best friend and I would head down to the bowling alley to roll a few $1 games. (Yeah, we were in a bowling league together in 7^th and 8^th grade. What about it?) Amazingly, I bowled a 217, my all-time high, my very first time back from Europe and about three months removed from the bowling alley. I didn’t break 200 the rest of the summer. *sigh*

During this entire time span, I occasionally interviewed for jobs too – I even interviewed for a job at adidas in Portland while I was in Europe. However, rarely did I feel terribly great about a getting the job after I would interview; except I did have an odd feeling about having a good shot at getting in at adidas. And if you know me, you know I’m a sports nut, so I thought a job there would have been amazing.

I’ll get back to adidas in a second, but I’d just like to share an example of how not good I felt about landing some jobs. During one interview, I was told that I was scheduled for 30 minutes and the interviewer told me that he had a meeting right after those 30 minutes were up. We sped through the interview with him mentioning several more times that he couldn’t be late to his next meeting. I could tell that he was skipping questions he should probably be asking, and when we got to the portion where I got to ask questions, he briefly answered one or two, then ushered me out the door. On my way out, he said that they’d know by the end of the month and let me know. I believe it was somewhere around the 10^th day of the month… 20 days to decide? Thanks for making me drive the hour up to Portland for that, sir…

Now back to adidas, this was the same company that interviewed me twice via Skype while I was in Europe, once in Berlin then the next day in Amsterdam. (Note: Interviewing on Skype at a foreign internet café in complete darkness, surrounded by a few people sitting in silence is much more awkward than you are currently imagining how ridiculously awkward it is.) Unfortunately, I didn’t get that job, but it appeared I was on their radar. This is a company that I would have been ecstatic to work at, mind you, so after returning from Europe, when I was contacted again by another recruiter from adidas, I was elated. “Am I really going to get a job in the industry I want to be in right after getting back from a three month trip to Europe?” I’d later find out that the answer was yes, but not at adidas. After interviewing with the recruiter, I was not chosen for yet another position at adidas, but then about a week or so later, I was contacted yet again for another position. I had an interview lined up. Then only to have the rug pulled right out from under my feet, I was called back the next day to find out that the job was already offered to someone else. It was extremely unfortunate and frustrating, but I don’t blame anyone at adidas for it. It was simply a result of bad timing and bad luck. Nonetheless, I was discouraged and essentially had to give up on adidas as the recruiter told me that they did not have any further finance-related positions coming available anytime soon.

All the while, I was also applying for jobs at Nike through their career website and through their temp service, Kelly Services. After applying for over 30 or so positions, I hadn’t heard a peep from Nike; not until one day when a Kelly Services recruiter called me regarding a position at Nike that I hadn’t even applied for. The recruiter asked me to review the position and let her know if I was interested. Of course I was interested! It was a Financial Analyst position, which was exactly what I was looking for. AT FREAKIN’ NIKE! So we set up an interview. A couple of days later, I was offered the job.

The rest is history now. I am a Financial Analyst for the Emerging Markets group at Nike World Headquarters. Although, I am a temporary worker until April, the goal is that I will impress them enough to land a job somewhere at Nike, if not the same position I’m currently doing.

In going from leaving a job I did not enjoy in an industry I had zero interest in, to retiring, to going on the trip of a lifetime and spending three months in Europe, to coming back home and reconnecting with my hometown, family, and hometown friends, and now to retiring from retirement and landing the job I was looking for in an industry that greatly interests me and at the company I had always envisioned myself working at, I am very lucky and thankful to have had my life fall into place like this.

Being the pessimist that I typically am too, all I can say is that it’s been a fantastic ride and not even I can find something to complain about in regards to how my life has unfolded over the past year…

Well, I don’t have a girlfriend… Life can’t be perfect, I guess.