Back in my college days, I voted solely on what was “cool”. Being a Democrat was “cool”. And I so wanted to be at the table with the cool kids. You know, the “educated” ones, the “intellectuals”. I would make fun of my young Republican friends for being too rigid and parochial; too “churchy”. I didn’t do uptight. I didn’t do church and I certainly didn’t do God and Christianity. Though looking back, I dabbled in other philosophies trying to find Him. I went wherever the wind took me. I was a child of the desert in Arizona, after all, it was edgy to be flippant. I had no real plans for my future. After racking up thousands of dollars in debt upon graduating college, I went looking for a full-time job. You know, one with a nice salary and benefits? I was entitled to that high-paying job with benefits because, after all, I had a BA.

One year into struggling to make my car payments, monthly rent and going to my mom’s house for dinner A LOT and complaining how others (who have paid their dues) made more than I did, I figured out very quickly that the world did not owe me a damn thing. I left the Arizona desert for a better-paying gig in Virginia and continued to work two or three jobs to pay my rent, make my car payments and pay off the credit card bills I so foolishly racked up. I did it. I waited tables, worked nights doing political phone surveys and finally got a decent-paying part-time union gig in D.C.

While hard work was paying off, I still lived solely for myself, for my own gratification. I still wanted so much to impress the right people and have people like me (a disorder that goes back to my days in elementary school). At one point, a Conservative friend of mine called me “selfish” and I thought, “How dare he”?! After all, I busted my hump and the world still owed me. I was entitled to be selfish.