Opportunity Amidst Uncertainty (2020)

Optimistic likely isn't the word that people who know me would use to describe my personality, but even then, I'm not somebody who believes in bad days.  For all of the talk of 2020 being a "bad year" I wouldn't personally describe it as such.

I don't write much (and not nearly as much as I wish I did.) As I've reflected on how I've pivoted and changed major portions of my life these past few years, I've felt that I've also equipped myself with the ability to adapt and overcome challenges along the way.

And sure, we have all experienced difficulties and hardships this past year. There isn’t anything unique in my experience that is honestly worth telling. I recognize that many were worse off. Many lost jobs, loved ones and battled major health problems, and I’m grateful to have not experienced any of those issues this year.

But in keeping to my own traditions of self-accountability and reflection, I think it’s important to continue that practice if only to continue to provide a vehicle for growth.

The first challenge of which came mid-February when on the way to a morning run, I collided with a deer at around 6 in the morning (or to be more specific it collided with my car by darting in front of it.) On its own, this isn’t a major event. For most, something like this would barely be an inconvenience. Call the insurance, get a rental for a while, be done with it. What I didn’t know at the time was that this would begin a chain reaction of events that would alter the trajectory of my year.

Mid-February was about the time that the pandemic began to pick up steam. If you followed any sort of international news, this was the time period that Italy was witnessing a wide-array of panic buying due to their imminent COVID lockdowns. Realizing it was only a matter of time before the unrest they were seeing worked its way this way, I encouraged friends and family to get what they needed in anticipation of supply-chain issues.

What transpired in the following weeks is likely to be the most fascinating events I think we will ever experience. I vividly remember visiting Costco three weeks in a row.

Week One: I made a Costco run to do a larger version of my normal shopping routine in anticipation of avoiding stores for awhile. At this point, stores felt normal, but you could notice that a small number of people were buying water, grains, and dog food.

Week Two: As the overseas situation had worsened, I again made my way to Costco to stock up on items that I felt would be hard to get once people started to react. I bought bulk rice, water, canned goods, and yes, one bulk pack of toilet paper. At this point, it was the last week in February and probably one out of every five shoppers had full carts of water and non-perishables. I had strongly encouraged my parents to get what they needed.

Week Three: At this point, panic buying had arrived. I had neither the desire nor the need to make any additional purchases, put curiosity again brought me to Costco to see the public reaction. The atmosphere had changed drastically. The store was packed to capacity, but despite the increase in shoppers, the store was quiet and filled with tension. Everybody had full carts and a very small minority of people were wearing gloves, which at the time seemed like an overreaction.  Before leaving, I went to the Food Court and ordered two large slices of Costco Pizza. The first weekend in March would be the last time I'd be able to do that.

March 6th was an important day for a variety of reasons. This was the day that I would receive my car back from the shop after the (first) incident. This was also the last day I would be able to enjoy post-work happy hour with co-workers. Most importantly though, this was the last workday before Spring Break, making it the last "normal" day of the year.

Spring Break would be another pivotal week, both publicly and personally. March 11th would see Tom Hanks announcing his positive COVID test. Not too long after, school districts would announce the suspension of "on-campus" learning for the remainder of the school year.

The evening before bars and restaurants were to close, I went to wander downtown, which would become another running theme for the year. It was absolutely fascinating to see how empty the streets were. This was before "social distancing", "limited-capacities" and permanent closures. At the time, I thought this would be the only time I would see my city in a different light. While Spring Break typically meant that the Riverwalk would be busy with tourists, at this moment it was absolutely vacant.

I figured it would be the last time for awhile I would be able to visit one of my favorite bars, Jet-Setter. Before leaving downtown, I went to grab a quick drink. As with the Riverwalk, this bar was also vacant. Not a single person other than myself at the bar.

Not too long after this evening, I would again cause a significant amount of damage to my car.  I remember exactly what I was doing. I was within two miles of my house, checking the COVID case counts on the Worldometers webpage, when I strayed a bit too far out of my lane.  I hit the curb where the drainage area was, and caused a significant amount of damage to the wheel support area under the car. Frankly, it was the dumbest things I've probably ever done, and writing this here is one of the first times I've been open about this publicly.

Being that this was the second time in as many months, I didn't want to create another insurance claim. I would later find out that the damage, while not initially bad aesthetically, totaled to about $4,000 in under-the-hood damage. This would prove to be quite the problem and was a perfect storm of issues.  To be frank, my new career path didn't leave me with any sort of income to deal with an unexpected expense that high. The "quarantine" phase of the pandemic had just started and there was a huge amount of uncertainty about job stability for months to come.

While that problem was manifesting, my workload at my job had changed drastically. While we had always been there to troubleshoot and support educators, the pandemic had created a seismic shift in what our role was. With in-person learning paused, education was starting to shift into a virtual learning model. This meant that tens of thousands of learning devices needed to be put into the hands of students across the district. With a single days notice, we reported to work with the direction to round up any device on campus, inventory it, stage it, and have it ready to distribute.

Those devices were then transported to hub campuses where we then teamed up with our peers across the district, and began the herculean effort to coordinate and deploy devices to students in need. This was foundational to the transition to virtual learning, and playing a part in this effort during a pandemic was one of the most rewarding professional experiences of my career.

As that effort wound down, we slowly transitioned to a "work-from-home" model of supporting educators and students via alternative means. The school year was also winding down, and I still had the issue of a car repair bill, and an overall cash flow problem. I was burning through my 401k  much faster than I had anticipated. The job market took a major hit, unemployment was at an all-time high and there were talks of cuts in every public sector of employment. This was about the time that grocery stores were continuing to see a huge amount of sales volume. Places like HEB, Lowe's, and Walmart announced that they had ramped up hiring efforts to bring in additional support that was needed due to the pandemic.

Seeing the opportunity present itself, I took a second job at a grocery store. In hindsight, this may have been the best course of action I could have taken.  I submitted a job application the first week of April, was called for a phone interview a week later, and two days later I was sent out to operate a register after only witnessing two transactions.

In a strange way, my previous work history had set me up for a high level of success between balancing both jobs. Working a salaried management job, I was accustomed to changing priorities and the sporadic long weeks. Having worked primarily retail my entire life, I was mostly able to pick up from where I had left off at SeaWorld. My days from April onward consisted of logging into one job during the day, and then in the evening logging off, eating dinner, and then heading into Walmart.

Seeing the ebbs and flows of the occasional supply shortages between toilet-paper, cleaning supplies, meat, and even coins from the perspective of a grocery store was a unique experience. I've been able to work not only as a cashier, but I monitored store traffic and taken counts at the doors, sanitized carts, pushed carts, and eventually settled into working at the Service Desk. I've been able to witness fights between shoppers, shady customers, and people become irate over $0.03 in change. It's been an experience that has furthered my perspective while being incredibly rewarding in numerous ways.

As it turns out, Walmart also had an excellent tuition assistance program for permanent employees. The only issue was that I had been hired as a temporary associate at the start of the pandemic, which typically were on a 6-month term. Through my initial first few months, I had felt that I had shown value by bringing experience and reliability to the front-end team, particularly during an unusual period. I thought I had learned quick enough to make myself worth keeping on as a permanent employee, and I had expressed interest in staying on indefinitely to take advantage of the program. Shortly after expressing that interest, I found that I had been converted and became eligible.

The ship had sailed on attending in-person school for a variety of reasons. One being that I now have a full-time career, and even more so now that I'm working a part-time job. Southern New Hampshire University had an online Information Technology Bachelors of Science Program that seemed like a great fit. They transferred over most of my credits from my previous course work, the school operates on 8-week terms, and they had a brick-and-mortar campus to lend itself to legitimacy. By late-June, I had enrolled in two classes, an Introduction to Scripting course and IT Fundamentals. By the end of the year, I would have completed 7 courses with a GPA of 3.904, with an anticipated graduation date of 10/2021.

This wasn't without its drawbacks. As my primary job transitioned back to a regular on-site schedule, I opted to maintain my usual work schedule that I had during the work-from-home period and summer break. This meant that I would be on-site for one job, and then have an hour in between heading to the other job that I would be working for 20-32 hours a week. From August until the end of the year, free-time would be non-existent. Between a full-time job, a part-time job and coursework, time-management and self-discipline were absolutely critical. "Free-time" outside of my 60-72 hour work weeks now consisted of studying, cleaning, and sleeping.

There's so much that happened this year. That doesn't even touch on the rioting that took place in and around the country this year around May.  The morning following one of the more eventful nights, I walked downtown to see an interesting juxtaposition. There was a heavy amount of damage; broken windows, vandalism and spray paint. But on the other end, the community had come together to start to pick up the pieces and clean the damage. Even San Antonio Spur Lonnie Walker IV was out there handing out water and talking to normal people. I had even witnessed him take part in a prayer with a downtown business owner.

I don't think there's ever been a point in time where I worked harder, yet received so much in return. I've never felt so appreciated and thankful for the opportunities that I have. If last year was about learning, then this year was about executing through uncertainty and finding a way to make it work.

I'm not sure what the next 12 months will bring. None of the societal root causes of any of our issues have been addressed. A more contagious variant of COVID making its rounds, we are sitting at record high case counts and there is likely to be more political instability on the way. Half of the country seems to deny a problem exists while also denying the vaccine that promises to solve it.

My biggest takeaway is a lesson that I should have learned a long time ago. I had a VP that used to say that when things got difficult, to "control what you can control." While I may have heard that mantra, it wasn't always one that I was the best at practicing until now. In a year where I felt like I came in with a good plan, a lot outside of my control happened.  Instead of throwing out the plan in frustration, I adjusted, course-corrected, and can say that I'm exiting this year much better positioned than when I entered it.

Regardless of what happens moving forward, I'm confident that by assessing the situation, figuring out what I can control, and executing on that, I'll be poised to figure a way to make it through whatever challenges I face this year.