The Future Me.

This is the first Action Project for my Endurance course. The purpose of this project was to write the first chapter of your autobiography predicting how your life is going to be 30 years from now. I feel like this project helped me take a deeper look within myself and now I feel like I have a clear understanding of how i want my life to be in the future. I also thought of everything that could go wrong along the way and now I feel like I am going to be a bit more cautious in life. I learned that I shouldn't rush things in life, I should just let things happen naturally. I am very proud of the story I wrote. One of the most difficult things about this project was, I had to basically figure out what I was going to do in life before it even happened. Please read my story below. Enjoy!

BKJ, My Two Passions (2016)

As a kid I always had a love for animals and I had a dream that I would grow up to be a veterinarian. As I grew up I realized that a vet might not be the right option for me. When I was young I experienced the death of 2 of my dogs. From that point on, I knew that I couldn’t be a vet because I could not stand the sight of an animal die or be injured. Later on in my teenage years I thought a little bit about being a police officer because I admired them at the time and that was one of the most common thing for a kid to aspire to be. When my high school years came I started up my rebellious stage just as most teenagers do. My freshman year I Ironically decided that I wanted to pursue graffiti art. I was never serious about the art, I just did it for fun in my notebook. Sophomore year of high school I decided that I wanted to be more serious about graffiti art. All throughout the rest of my high school years I was doing graffiti and skateboarding.

After high school I decided that I did not want to go to college. In high school I met a fellow graffiti artist named Revoe from California through social media. At first we just talked about each other's art and then eventually we grew a friendship and even talked about meeting after high school (same age). In some of the conversations we talked about opening a graffiti shop in Chicago after high school. Instead of college I decided to travel for a little before I pursue my dream to start a business. I decided that I wanted to go to California and meet my friend. For a good 5 years I lived in California. When I was in California I got a job working at a skate shop and I worked there for 3 years. One day I woke up feeling homesick and I decided I wanted to go back to Chicago.

Before leaving for Chicago I told my friend that I wanted to go back to Chicago and I asked him if he was still interested in starting a business with me and he said yes. Less than a half a month later we were on a plane to Chicago. When we arrived in Chicago I showed him around and we found an apartment and bunked together. We both found jobs and started saving up to fund the business. After a while things just fell apart, We basically let procrastination get to us and 4 years had passed and we still had not even planned out the basics of the business. One night Revoe asked me if I wanted to go paint a CTA train and I declined because I was exhausted from work. The next morning I woke up to find that Revoe was still gone and I began to wonder where he was. Later that day I was sitting on the couch and I got a phone call from jail and I found out that the reason he did not return is because he got caught and was sentenced to 5 years in jail for vandalizing a CTA train.

After I found that out I knew that I had to hold off my plans to start the business. One night I went to the bar because it was a very stressful day at work and I just needed to let off steam. While at the bar I met a woman named Maria, me and her talked all night and decided to keep in touch so we exchanged numbers. After about 2 months me and Maria became very close and actually started dating. We moved in together about a month later and had a very strong relationship. A few years later I decided it was time for me to take our relationship to another level. One night I took Maria to dinner and towards the end of the night, I got down on one knee and asked her to be my wife. When I asked her to be my wife she started crying and said “YES!” A few months later we had our wedding and it was amazing, almost everyone we knew showed up to support us in the new stage of our relationship. Everything got better from then on, we moved out of the apartment and bought a house and I was promoted to manager at a local skate shop in Uptown, Chicago. When I was at work one day Maria called me and said she had something very important to tell me when I got home. When I got home later that night we sat down on the couch and she announced that she was pregnant with twins. Excited to be a dad, I started to prepare for the babies to be born. Every week after work I would stop at the store and buy something new for the baby room. Nine months late baby Brian and Daniel were born. A month passed and I was thinking that life was perfect, I had 2 healthy, happy babies and a beautiful wife. The only thing that stayed on my mind was Revoe, he was getting out in a few months and I was excited to finally see him again.

Three months later Revoe got out of jail. When I went to go pick him up he got in the car and started to tear up because he was finally out of jail. I told him what he missed such as me getting married and having twins. He was surprised to hear the news. When he got out of jail he obviously had nowhere to stay because all of his family was in California so Me and Maria invited him to stay with us as long as he needed. One day I was talking to Revoe and he explained to me that it is very hard to find a job because of his criminal record. Ironically, later that same week, I had a fight with my boss and got fired. When i went home later that day I announced that I got fired and Revoe said “now is a great time to start that business we were gonna start years ago.”

Just a few weeks later we had begun planning out our business. We knew that we both wanted our business to have elements of graffiti in it but, I had the idea that we also make it a skate shop too because skateboarding and graffiti are interconnected in a way. With a little financial advice from Maria's father and a long time writing out business plan, we had our business started. The first few weeks of our new business was tough because nobody knew we existed. We started to formulate a way to advertise. I realized that I could just go to the skate park and start telling people and they would spread the word about our business. Just a month later our business is very successful and we have at least 20 customers a day. We also added an addition to our shop in the past week where people with little or no experience with graffiti and skateboarding can come in and learn from other. The addition to our shop does not bring in profit but it benefits the community. As of today our business is still thriving and we will continue to do the best we can to stay open for many years to come.