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School.

Previously I wrote in my article successful college dropout about how school and I don’t get along very well. There was one school, though. One school that made a very big difference for me.

There’s some people who may think that there were some bad influences in there, but I believe with everything I know about myself that I was going to go in the direction I went regardless of the school I went to. It was this school I went to that gave me the tools and the opportunity to do what I am doing today.

September School.

Bear in mind this is less about traditional education and more about what they gave me in terms of knowledge, encouragement, and experience. There’s a lot of little things the people working for that school did for me as a student — and showed me parts of them as people, that really made me feel like I mattered. That I was somebody, someone besides my parents, actually cared about.

That’s really all I needed sometimes.

I don’t know what it was about me growing up, but kids didn’t like me. They really liked having me around so that they could put me down — and honestly, because at that time I just wanted friends. I let them do it.

It wasn’t always this way, of course. I don’t know if it was the age or the area, but this started when we first moved to Colorado and I was going to elementary school in Longmont.

Before then I had plenty of friends and we all got along in Halifax, Hong Kong, & Andover. Seriously, always. There wasn’t really any bullying or fighting. We were just laughing and having a good time regularly.

Well, there was one time in Andover.

We were riding on the bus and one of the fifth graders (I was in second grade at the time) was turning around the seat making fun of my friend, Jamie. Jamie and I haven’t spoken in years, but he was always really kind and generous with his things. He had more video games than me and a trampoline, so I loved spending time with him and getting to know him.

This jerk of a kid kept calling my friend a “lonely fat ass loser”

And so I looked him dead in the eye and said “Hey! Why don’t you pick on someone your own size, mongoloid!”

This was funny for a number of reasons. One, I think that’s the first time I had ever used that word and I heard it on an episode of the Simpsons… or Beavis & Butthead.

Secondly, I was a second grader telling this to a fifth grader about twice my size.

Thirdly, this is the very first time I was punched in the face.

I can’t remember if I got a suspension or just a stern phone call from the school for this, but I remember running up to the front of the bus crying to the bus driver.

The driver asked, “what’s going on?”

I, being of the healthy vocabulary I had at this time properly responded with the timeless:

“He punched me in my fucking nose!”

And that’s about the last conflict I remember with anyone in Andover before we moved. I had very many friends after that, all who wanted to spend time with me.

I really wish I was given a chance to do something like that early on in Colorado.

In Colorado I think kids quickly figured out I had something wrong with me way faster than I ever did. They spent a lot of lunches riling me up just to see me get angry and have a fit. I have fairly good equilibrium with my anger issues these days thanks to my meds, but back then I think kids got a lot of entertainment from me losing myself in a maelstrom of rage. I’m talking about the vein popping, murderous kind. There’s nothing about it I am proud of and I am glad to say that there are very few people now who can remember seeing me in that shameful state.

There’s a lot of details about those years that don’t need to be gotten into. What does is that when I went to September School, I was accepted.

I honestly really hurt myself there a little when I went. There were lots of kids I could have made really close, lifetime relationships with. But, being the person I am,

I found a girlfriend and completely absorbed myself in her.

I think, at that time, it was everything I wanted for my self-confidence and it honestly did help me focus on school, especially writing. Which looking back I think a lot of the teachers there very much focused on trying to get a lot of writing out of me. Getting me to practice it. 

I was very often, almost constantly encouraged to write while I was in that school. It’s something that maybe didn’t mean as much to me as it should have then, but I can’t stop thinking about now.

I do still have some friendships from that school — though more acquaintances these days; it’s more my fault than anything. They were really nice and accepting kids that I am glad I got to know. I still miss a number of them as I was truly beginning to garner some really close friendships before moving off to college and losing my mind.

I really want to focus on the teaching, though. That is the thing that is really beginning to impact me now.

I wrote about encouragement earlier. September School is pretty much built from the foundations up on it. Now, it’s been about 10 years since my graduation so I am not entirely sure how much things have changed. I do know that while I was going there homework was not a priority.

Being there, being accepted, encouraging one another to be ourselves. That was pretty much the biggest deal that went on, and the teachers did this as well. I feel like they often tried their best to get through to the kids they were teaching to try and ignite something in them to apply themselves to.

Back then, I now know they were seeding some really good roots in me.

I still had my legal and mental problems after graduation — though looking back I have absolutely nothing but respect, admiration, and gratitude for what that school did for me.

I was actually able to graduate, for one! I could not apply myself enough in public high school for me to have been able to get a degree there. It would not have happened. I can very easily say I would not be where I’m at today without their schooling. At least not in the same way.

Now, with all this writing just coming so freely from me, I just don’t think there is a way to truly express my gratitude enough.

So I am going to do what I am doing now. Everything I have ever been encouraged to do. I am just going to keep writing.

I think, the deeper meaning I am trying to find from this piece is that maybe

it’s not always about how the person does in school — but how the school does for the person.

Were it not for September School I think I’d be far less successful and happy than I am now.

I wish there were more teachers like the ones at Sep School, the ones before them gave up on me pretty easily.

Thank you for reading.

©2017 Trevor Elms
Featured Photo by Michael H.-C. ©2008 – Various 2008 graduates pictured in Thailand.
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Thoughts.

This was something I wrote August, 2008. I remember sitting in the shade of a tree with the moleskine my group teacher, Leslie, from high school gifted me. One of the greatest gifts ever given to me today.

When she gifted it to me, she told me that I reminded her of Ernest Hemingway. That may be the highest compliment anyone has even given me.

I just sat down to write something, anything, and it ended up being about a girl in the dorms I had a crush on. I can’t remember her name, and she never heard it.

I was feeling very alone and scared at this time. I had just recently moved to Hawai’i and I am a fairly strong introvert. I had not yet met the people who were to become my close friends.

Thoughts.

I plan to finish this whole notebook.

As I sit here writing in the fine lines that fabricate recorded thoughts.
On pre-cognitive set pathways that lead to nowhere.

And nowhere?
Led me somehow through all these pages of turmoil, to you.
Why you?

Because the mind tends to wander to those emotions,
that incite feedom,
and hope.

The burning fire…
colorless,
but with untamed form.

A full frontal force that fascinates the multifaceted shatters,
that are my feelings.

©2008 Trevor Elms
Photo by Trevor Elms ©2008
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Pathways.

November 5th, 2008. One of the more depressing things I have found that I wrote. There’s really no optimism in this whatsoever. At least that I am gleaning from it. I feel like this was when I was really beginning my downward turn. My brother Alan would tell you the same. As later that month when I visited home for Thanksgiving he became very worried about me.

Pathways

Where does this path of mine lead?

It winds,

It twists,

It involves the leaves and the trees.

 

Stumbled have I, at the start.

Too easy is it,

to play when the pathway gets dark.

 

Nightmares of failure and disappointment,

haunt equilibrium and comfort.

 

Hoping the stride here isn’t futile,

Another broken heart.

 

I’m very happy to be taking medication for my bi-polar these days.

Thank you for reading.

©2008 Trevor Elms
Featured photo by Trevor Elms ©2016
Posted on by Trevor Elms · 13 Comments

Imagination.

One of the things I am doing with this site to keep me inspired even when I am not — is to find words I love and write about them. I want to take one word and turn it into something more.

Recently I was incredibly inspired and am feeling a bit drained. However, I feel like a difference between a successful writer, and a hobbyist — is that they can push through times of drainage and learn to force inspiration out of themselves.

So that is what I am doing today. I picked one of the tens of drafts of words saved during times of inspiration and am looking to find more within it. I believe I have chosen a good word for my first drainage since starting this website.

Today I want to write about the word imagination and what is has meant to me as a person.

My imagination has gotten me through just about every day that I can remember. From as early as nap time making finger fights between knights and dragons — which truthfully just looked like two hands kicking each other.

Imagination is something I never, ever want to lose. It’s something that I feel I have certainly lost sharpness to over the years. Even feel like part of me starting this website was to fight for it back. To not just sit on the couch and satisfy my creative desires by consuming others’ hard work. Not to say that is a bad thing, but I have spent a lot of time in the last few years just consuming media wracking my brain for what I could do with myself.

What I could apply myself to on my free time that could be supported with my full-time job, while not distracting me from it. I’ve needed a true outlet for my imagination for some time. I work in design for a living, but there are guidelines, and decisions that are not my own. I do not begrudge these things, this is part of being a working professional and I quite like what I do and how I do it.

I did need something that is 100% completely my own however. Where I make the decisions, and choose how things look, feel, and express.

When I first created this website I didn’t even know how it would be perceived. And I am not saying it is a success, far from it. However it is already a success in the way I have wanted it to be.

I have spent the last week crying, almost daily, about the things that have been written. I have broken through a wall of creativity that has been blocked (excepting small, important doses) for nearly 10 years. I’ve been able to use my imagination again.

I love to use my imagination in my writing, even when writing non-fiction. Which I seem to be writing a lot more lately and find funny. I grew up always wanting to use my imagination to write fiction, but believe I am better served using it to illustrate real things, and real perspectives. At least at this time, that’s what’s pushing me to write more.

I don’t necessarily think people deserve to or should read these things, but want to get them down. I want them out of my head for more space for more imagination so that I can continue to do things with these words that have been missed so much.

Words and imagination go hand in hand in for me. My parents spent a lot of time teaching me the value of money growing up — but one thing they also valued was books.

My Mom would take me to the book store to buy one any time I finished the one I was previously reading. No chores needed, nothing. They would buy me books without question while growing up and I cannot thank them enough for this. I was reading adult literature like the Lord of the Rings by around 11-12, and studying it.

That is how I learned to love words and how they can be used to paint any kind of picture for any kind of mind.

Books and books and books and books. So many books that I don’t even really read them any more. I read way more comic books. Almost 100% of my actual personal reading for entertainment comes from comic books these days.

One of the reasons for this is that I really don’t want my own imagination, and my own prose affected by another’s. I really need to keep myself away from those things if for no other reason than I am terrified of accidentally being influenced by something — and then being looked at as a fake because of it.

I know I am already influenced by everything I have ever read. Though now  I feel like I have a strong grasp on the English language, and would be better served by speaking to an editor to learn more.

Maybe this is a bad choice, I am not sure of it, but I am not interested in reading books so much right now. We still have a bit of a library in our house — sometimes I will pick up a book already read and crunch a good 250 pages into it before it goes on the stack next to my side of the bed, almost certain not to be cracked open again.

I’ve been trying to find some larger meaning here, but this time I’m not so sure there is one.

I just love the word imagination, and what it brings with it. I want to make sure I never lose mine, because I feel if I do I will lose a very large piece of what makes me.

Thank you for reading.

©2017 Trevor Elms
In featured photo from left to right: Alan Elms, Brian Capone, Kevin Perkins, Paul Perkins, Sean Capone, Trevor Elms.

 

 

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Former Self.

Something I wrote March 2nd, 2010. I think at the time I was feeling pretty abandoned by a lot of my friends because we didn’t have much in common anymore. I had to be sober due to legal and mental problems, and they did not want to subject me to any substances that could hurt my recovery.

I know now that they were just trying to support me in the best way they could, but that doesn’t mean that in that time it didn’t hurt. I do not hold on to these feelings any longer, but I feel like reflecting on this piece and by extension our lives — can teach us something.

Former Self.

I find it funny,
That my family and my girl are the only ones who see me for me.

Not who I was while smokin’ trees,

I kinda like feelin’ the breeze,

to fall and heal a scrape on my knees.

What is it with people and the falseness they precede to breathe?

A fakeness that presides to feed into selfishness and greed of this once arrogant steed.

He used to need,

now the mind’s open and free, 

the crises left to a solid creed.


Leaving behind those breaching the void,

with a broken future to avoid.

Annul this boy of his past’s ploys for he paints a bright picture he now deploys.

 

Unsure of the moist sponge in his hands, the picture has now plunged into a plan, facets collide and make a stand.

 

See me for me.

And not the former self canned.

 

It seems my plan worked. I no longer recognize the person featured in the photo as myself. Photographer unknown, but I believe it was one of my friends whom we consider ourselves Ohana — they know who they are.

Thank you for reading.

©2010 Trevor Elms

 

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Friendship.

I want to preface this piece by saying that I have a good amount of friends and I care for them all deeply. Moreso than I can express. This is about one friend, though. The one whom through most length in my life has always accepted me for who I am and loved me regardless. Without him I do not know what I would do.

Not shortly after my mental break with reality I told my friend Alex Thiessen.

Alex Thiessen is not just a friend. Alex Thiessen is the closest and best friend I have ever had in my life. He is not the only person in this category, but he does have a category of his own within it. Just as each of my friends does.

Alex Thiessen literally owns a piece of me, and not by choice.

He is someone who I am uncontrollably myself around. Whom when we do not speak for days, weeks, or months at a time — it feels as nothing. We are the same as always. Like a rock in the sea. Life bashes against it and it changes over time, but in the end it is always the rock. Ever the rock.

It was not but 60 seconds into the phone call that Alex told me he was flying himself to Hawai’i.

You have to understand — I was a nineteen year old recently bailed out of jail/mental rehabilitation center dragger on, and he was an eighteen year old hard working, putting himself through college badass.

Friendship 3
Pictured from left to right: Neal Radia, Jack Russel, Kisa Vanderford, Austin Haigh, Trevor Elms. Photo taken by Neal Radia in the Lexus February 1st, ©2009.

Alex didn’t think twice about dropping everything to come and see me. And I didn’t have to wait long at all. If I am remembering correctly, I was able to pick Alex up in the used Lexus that was purchased with one of the last drops of my college savings — which wasn’t going to legal fees, less than a week later. That car was too good for me.

One of my favorite things about Alex is that whenever I get around him I just want to spend time with him. We were always using our imaginations and playing trading card games. We can talk about video games, Pokémon, comic books, really any kind of media that until recently wasn’t all that accepted in pop-culture — for hours.

Even though Alex and I are odd ducks that got into real trouble in our teenage years, we never got into any with each other.

I think, mutually, we never wanted to be a bad influence on each other and we never wanted our parents to dislike us spending time together. So when Alex and I spend time together, we spend time together. It’s almost like no one else is there, because honestly I don’t think in those moments they are.

I think something that people don’t understand about true friendship is that it is true love.

I have a relationship very similar to Alex that I have with my wife. I tell him everything. Everything. 

Friendship 2
Photo taken by Alex Thiessen in Honolulu ©2009

Alex is one of the friendships in my life where I have true love for him, and him for me. We always try to end the phone call by telling each other we love one another. There is nothing subtextually or overtly sexual, but I love Alex Thiessen with every fiber of my being. He is one of the greatest people I have ever gotten to know in my life and we have both helped each other improve as human beings over our time together.

The morning after Alex arrived, the first thing we did was take the car for a walk to go to the rental store.

I can’t remember if it was a Blockbuster or not but I do remember that we grabbed a few movies and video games. The games being Prince of Persia (2008), and Infinite Undiscovery. We also grabbed an unhealthy amount of junk food and soda.

This was further rehabilitation for me, support.

Something that I believe anyone from any walk of life who goes through a hard time needs. I had a lot of support from a lot of people, which a great many people unfortunately are not afforded — and that is a tragedy. There is a lot of self-fulfilling prophecy that goes on in a person like myself’s head & life when we do not seek and gain the support we need to function.

Alex’s support was exactly what I needed at that time.

I’ve been trying to find a meaning within the words to end this piece on and support is the word to focus in on. I could probably write 30,000 more words just about Alex, but I think being as concise as possible can more often than not get the point across most clearly.

Please support your fellow humans, you do not know who they are or what they have gone through.

I feel if we spend more time supporting one another and less time judging one another then maybe we can accomplish more than we already have as a species — and that is a pretty cool idea to think about.

Give a homeless person extras while walking to your car, give a glass of water to a person working in your home, give a person who looks alone just a little bit of your time and introduce yourself. Just a little can do a lot. I have seen it and experienced it myself.

Support and give to your fellow human beings, you never know when they need it most. Give them friendship. Give them love.

Thank you for reading.

©2017 Trevor Elms
Featured Photos taken by Kathleen Thiessen & Edited by Trevor Elms
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Experiences.

I had a tattoo session recently where my friend as well as tattoo artist Jayce and I got to talking about all the stupid shit I signed myself up for as a kid.

We got to talking about this because I legitimately was about to jump into another stupid idea on a whim. Graham, another artist at the shop who I have gotten to know pretty decently over the last ~40 hours at All Sacred — made mention of something. He just blurted out while Jayce was adjusting his machine for going too fast –

“You should just do it. Check it out, get tatted with it going that fast.”

I responded without a second thought:

“Fuck it, why not? Let’s do it.” — though immediately pivoted and asked a pertinent question,

“Wait, if you actually try to tattoo me is it going to mess up the tattoo?” There is no stupid questions, only stupid answers — but I think we all know the answer I got to that question.

I told Jayce to just keep working on his stellar artwork and we’ll revisit the idea after the session, because I truly was interested.

I was interested because it was an experience I had not gone through before.

This is a very big part of my personality that I very much embrace within some bounds of personal safety. The motto “try everything once” is a creed I believe in.

I believe we can often gain wisdom and learn more through life experience than anything else. And the more we experience the more we can gain empathy and be able to put ourselves in one’s shoes.

Growing up I opted to do things like take an XL water balloon sling at full blast in the back — point blank.

I opted to to be taped in a cardboard box and slid down a flight of stairs, rolled down Niblick Dr. in a garbage can, as well as sled over a large cactus patch (we all did that one, multiple times).

My earliest memory of something like this — I don’t think I could have been much older than four or five. My cousin Kevin who is a little over a year older than me and absolutely brilliant, convinced me of a grand farce.

If I were to ride my Mongoose bicycle down my grandparent’s wooden stairs a magical fish would give me three wishes. I’m not sure where he got the idea of a fish, but I’m pretty sure it didn’t matter what he told me. All I needed was a cool thing to do and a reason to do it.

One thing I need to mention about the stairs, and this memory. They led to my grandparent’s driveway down a very acutely angled hill. The driveway is not very wide, and the stairs are perpendicular to it.

Did I mention there was a flatbed trailer on the opposite side and a partition of very old, very stoic pine trees behind that?

You can see where this is going from here. I ended up flying ass over handlebars across the flatbed to land softly in a bed of pine and branches. Thankfully young children don’t have much mass, so I got a scrape here and there as well as a way cool story.

Actually, how could I forget when my brother had me take the snow tube down the back of the house? I hit a log going at a decent whip and backflipped into an olympian-like landing.

I was two years old.

Story after story keeps popping into my head but I think I’ve illustrated enough here. This is a part of my personality that I now know I was born with. My experiences go beyond daredevil nonsense though, and that is just one of the extremes that I had the penchant to explore.

I want to share my experiences traveling the world and exploring different cultures from as early as five years old.

I think one of the greatest things my family ever did was move outside of the United States to live in Asia and discover the planet. My father took an opportunity to succeed and support his family in a promotion that meant he had to leave the U.S. behind — and he packed up his family with it.

This was in 1995 and he was working for PictureTel which was working on (and succeeding at) video conferencing over the internet before the majority of people even had it. We moved to Hong Kong and our lives were never the same. It was the 1990s, which I think in the future will be remembered a lot like the roaring 1920s. What I mean by this is when we moved to Hong Kong PictureTel didn’t just set us up there and that’s where we stayed 100% of the time.

PictureTel regularly paid for my father to take his entire family with him across countries and continents.

Places like Australia, Bali, the UK, France, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines (though we couldn’t leave the resort), & Thailand. All before I turned 9 years old. I think there’s a couple more in there I am missing, but just those blow my mind when I think about it.

With those three years in my early childhood alone I had seen and experienced more parts of the world and more cultures than most people will ever get to. This gave me a level of wisdom about acceptance and tolerance for those different than me that is now just inherent in me. I cannot understand not being accepting and tolerable of those different than you. When it comes to race, religion, rehabilitation, gender, sexual preference, personality disorder, mental illness, learning disability, birth defect, or beyond. If it is not affecting another person directly, negatively, I believe “Live and Let Live” to be a commandment of life we should live by.

It is my thirst for experience that gives me a lot of happiness in life.

It has also handed me plenty of strife. However, the biggest lesson I learned from reading “What the Buddha Taught” is that Life is Suffering. We cannot have the good without the bad. We cannot feel what truly makes this world and this life beautiful without understanding and experiencing what makes it dark and foreboding.

That doesn’t mean you need my experiences. Everyone’s are their own. But we do need to try and glean as much knowledge and wisdom about our experiences as we grow so we can continue to learn from them. All of them, not just the ones we like to remember to make ourselves feel better.

The ones we remember whether we want to or not.

I leave you by repeating this:

I believe we can often gain wisdom and learn more through life experience than anything else. And the more we experience the more we can gain empathy and be able to put ourselves in one’s shoes.

Thank you for reading.

©2017 Trevor Elms
Photo by John Elms
Posted on by Trevor Elms · 4 Comments

Rude Awakening.

This was a writing prompt for my writing class in my freshman and only year at the University of Hawai’i. I didn’t even complete but a semester.

September 22nd, 2008 — It’s interesting to look back and see that I was already in a downward spiral at the time. I was very confused and had no idea what to do with myself. So I was taking the time to explore life, my body, and my mind in all ways that I could get a sense of adventure — as well as experience beyond the walls of accepted society.

The picture featured in this post was taken 5 days before the writing of this poem. I was not remotely sober. This was just months before my mental break with reality.

Rude Awakening

Not once did I have a second thought,
I would succeed!
I’ll show them.

Now I sweat as I sleep,
shivering, shirtless, and scared.

Afraid all I ever told myself…
were excuses for my unbalanced, unregimented,
LAZY
ways.

I thought I was mature and ready,
but seems my bones are all that’s fully grown.
I feel disgrace, disappointment… and distant from home.
I realized how much I missed my own mother,
While having to conquer a fever alone.

I know what I have to do,
it’s quite simple and straightforward,
the question is not if I can,
it’s if I will.
I can try.
That’s all I’ve ever said… it amounted to nothing but lying in bed.

I hate myself for these ways I’ve created!
it’s as if I’m not failing my desires aren’t sated!

Never interested; always dreaming.
seething, teeming with ideas.
useless to those who don’t listen.
So what does a lazy troublemaker do?
He breaks habits and carves his way through.

I still haven’t broken some of those habits, and I certainly didn’t at the time of this writing, but I was at least acknowledging them at the time.

Thank you for reading.

©2008 Trevor Elms
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I Am A Successful College Dropout.

This is not an endorsement, far from it. This is a part of my story.

I went to college for all the wrong reasons.

I went because I thought it was what I was supposed to do. Doing what you think you are supposed to do when it comes to your far-reaching life choices is just not something I would recommend. At some point we need to be selfish. Being selfish is not inherently bad; everything in moderation, right? So there is a time and place to be selfish — and what you do with your life after graduating high school is one of those times and places.

My Dad had recently moved abroad again, my Grandfather had recently died,

and I recently discovered how much I enjoyed experimenting with the different experiences that excessive drug use could exhume from the mind.

School was never my forte. Don’t get me wrong, I love to learn. I will read and study endlessly about the things that interest me until my mind is full. The public school system just never did well at making me feel engaged or that a majority of what they were teaching me was going to apply to my every day life. At least, not in the way they were teaching me.

I have known for a long time that I was going to make something of myself, whatever that something is, and schooling wouldn’t be able to take much credit for it.

There is a school I give a lot of credit, September School in Boulder.

However that is a time for another part of my story.

Because I don’t like school, and because my parents did well by themselves (and saved for college since my birth), I decided I was going to take an all expenses paid vacation. The only place I wanted to go was a place that inspired just about every fiber of my being while I was there. Both good and bad.

I chose to go the University of Hawai’i at Manoa and study as an English major.

My Dad had recently moved abroad again, my Grandfather had recently died, and I recently discovered how much I enjoyed experimenting with the different experiences that excessive drug use could exhume from the mind.

What I wrote earlier is very important to this decision, as there was something about Honolulu that no television, brochure, visit, or news anchor had ever mentioned to me once in my 18 years on the planet.

Honolulu is a very dark and dirty place, one of the seediest underbellies in the nation. Waikiki itself at night particularly — and nobody talks about it.

This was the perfect storm for what became my mental break with reality, subsequent legal troubles, and battle with mental health.

You’re going to get tired of hearing this, but that is a story for another time. I’m a successful college dropout, remember?

If we skip forward by about 2 years I found a job interview to get into the ground floor of an eCommerce paintball site, literally. It was in this guy’s basement.

I have been offered every job I have interviewed for, and this was no different. Interviewing is probably the single most important part of securing a job. Nobody cares what your resume says if you can’t function like a professional adult and present yourself as a confident person who knows what they are doing.

If you aren’t confident in yourself, how can you expect your employer to be confident you can do your job?

I was ecstatic to receive this job with no benefits and starting at $10/hr. At the time I was working in retail at an educational toy store for $7.50/hr +.03% commission. That number is not a joke. The catalyst for this new job was them reducing my pay by $.50/hr and giving me a commission rate that would make me have to sell 5 times the store’s paltry daily take just to make that $.50/hr back in commission. The store’s mission was great, the management was out of touch and incompetent and I felt like a high school kid in a high school job.

Hustle Paintball was the exact place that I needed to springboard myself into the career that I have now. I was able to do everything from shipping and receiving to order management, marketing, video recording/editing/writing, and graphic design. Graphic design was something I was always doing growing up on forums. In my early teens (00s) I was moderating and game mastering private online Lineage 2 servers. I was taking free commissions from randoms to design them signatures with any kind of imagery I could find at that time. I even have a really old Photobucket account lying around with some of it in there.

Being the guy who designed logos, banners, websites, etc. Really gave me the experience I needed after almost 4 years to feel like that is what I wanted to do with myself professionally.

No more 3 hour phone calls with no sales, No more shipping, No more front-end retail anything.

Just graphic design. The idea was a little daunting, but why not? A challenge was necessary. I wanted to see if I could hack it. Hell, I wanted to see if anyone would actually hire some dude with a high school degree and some college experience as an English major — with the audacity to call himself a graphic designer.

So like previously, which I neglected to mention — I had my wife (then girlfriend) and my wonderful mother comb through Craigslist for another job listing for me. There are some things I cannot very well apply myself to, and this is one of those things. I am so appreciative that I had their help at that time.

Another interview, this time much more thorough and professional.

We didn’t even start face to face. It all began with an email response asking me if I could schedule a phone interview. This is where my process about this became very important, I feel, and I could even ask my current co-worker and former boss that hired me to find out.

I responded to the email as quickly as possible with my open (unemployed) schedule at that point, we set up a time and I was excited. I didn’t look forward to it too much or think about it too much, I feel like that can mess me up. So I set my mind on other things until it was time.

The phone call went without a hitch. I am an introvert that absolutely despises the phone, I really dislike talking on it. There’s something about it that really fucks with me mentally and I am still unable to concisely put it to words. So despite that, I am able to very much ignore it for however long is necessary and present myself as I am, as someone who “wants” to be on the phone.

Brandi, the interviewer, ended the phone call telling me she was going to send me a graphic prompt to compare with the other candidates and she needed to have it from me by the end of the weekend.

She had it within the hour.

This was very important to me. I wanted her to know that I can work very fast when necessary but still provide quality work. That must have made an impression because here I am working at The Motorcycle Company as the Lead Graphic Designer closing in on 5 years later.

TMC is a Harley-Davidson Dealership group that manages 6 dealerships across the nation.

High Octane Harley-Davidson in MA

Palm Beach Harley-Davidson in FL

Rawhide Harley-Davidson in KS

Avalanche Harley-Davidson in CO

Riverside Harley-Davidson in CA

Huntington Beach Harley-Davidson in CA.

When I was hired by TMC they had just picked up their 3rd dealership (Avalanche) and were just starting to put together their dealership group because they knew it was only going to get bigger and harder to manage.

So again, I lucked into a situation at the very ground floor that gave me the opportunity to grow and succeed with the company.

I guess, the moral of this part of my story is that it is possible to be a successful college dropout. It just takes a hell of a lot of desire, starting low, working your way up by continuing to look for a better opportunity when it is time — and a dash of luck.

Make sure you learn to interview too. Legitimately, take an interviewing class. I took one in my senior year in high school and the lessons I learned were invaluable to me.

Don’t go to college just because you feel like you should based on societal, familial, or peer pressures.

If you are not ready, you are seriously not ready. It may just set you back a few years in other ways if you go when it isn’t time.

I don’t know if I will ever go back to school. I do know that I will be ready when I do.

©2017 Trevor Elms
Posted on by Trevor Elms · 16 Comments

Waking Up Bipolar.

“I am not bipolar, no matter how many doctors have attempted to diagnose me with it.”

– Myself, February 12th, 2009.

I am going to use this as a bit of a writing prompt for how things change over time. How a person can grow up and come to realize that just believing in something hard enough, isn’t going to make it true. This is a part of my story.

I am not bipolar. That was a fact.

The thing is, I am bipolar. I just wouldn’t or couldn’t admit it to myself due to a sense of pride, or something larger. A feeling that after my mental break with reality that I could still be a normal person. It was just a one time thing, I could pick myself up and go on going on in life like everything was normal.

And I did, and it was — except for that it wasn’t.

After completing out-patient and probationary treatment I didn’t take anything or talk to anyone for my bipolar for years. I kept at my job and my relationships with my then girlfriend (now wife) and family continuing to find opportunity after opportunity to find work and succeed. To an onlooker from the outside looking in, I’m sure everything was normal. I’ve gotten good at that — normal.

It’s inside though. It’s the roller coaster of two very associative emotions that constantly feed into each other in the worst of ways. I do not have typical bipolar, you see. I have bipolar 2 — this means that rather than regularly swinging between mania and depression I swing between anger and depression. I still have moments of mania, but it isn’t as frequent or as unmanageable as BP1. This is an extremely important distinction. Typically, with a lot of the anger I would regularly feel — I had just gotten used to hiding it from the rest of the world, or, at least not giving in to it outwardly. This would result in absolute eruptions about the smallest of things. In fact, I had two nicknames growing up, one “Meat”, which sticks to this day and came around purely because I don’t consider a meal a meal without it. The other however is less endearing, “Angry Man”.

I have bipolar 2 — this means that rather than regularly swinging between mania and depression I swing between anger and depression.

Angry Man came around when all stamping of every little micro-frustration just couldn’t be stamped down any more. I would erupt at something as small as someone asking me to pick up my things. I can’t think of a great example right now, because usually in those moments I could only see red and I no longer am able to think or control myself before I speak or act. It got me in trouble plenty of times.

My depression is not as strong as some other people, thankfully. It’s fairly easy for me to “ignore” in a way without medication. I used to like to describe myself in two ways. I had two emotions to share: ambivalence, or anger. The ambivalence is my depression. I just didn’t care, and don’t care about life and myself sometimes. Like it doesn’t matter.

But then, things all came crashing to a head one day.

I can’t remember the exact day precisely, but I know it was about two to two-and-a-half years ago. It was about 3:00 in the morning and I couldn’t sleep. Then a thought crossed my mind that hadn’t in quite some time.

“I should just kill myself. I know I have the balls to follow through, why the fuck not?”

This was, if I am remembering correctly, after a night where Megan and I did not get along very well. I believe there was something trivial she did that set me off and then we preceded to escalate on each other. This is a low point in my life because I think I came very close to hitting her that night.

So that exchange, coupled with my inherent nihilism and depression fueled by anger gave me the thought. Why not? There’s plenty of reasons why not that I don’t need to get into here, and what’s nice is I had plenty running through my head just after I asked myself that question. However that is a very serious question to ask oneself, for that to be a serious thought after nearly hitting my wife? I knew something was wrong with me.

So I went into the bedroom to wake Megan up and tell her I was concerned about myself.

Talking about my concern turned into “I want to kill myself and I think it’s time to talk to someone.”, but it wasn’t that clear. It was a different kind of eruption that I’m really not all that used to. An absolute deluge of tears and blubbering facial contortion while huddled in the fetal position grasping at my wife like lost child.

It was that night I realized that maybe my ambivalence was also me just stamping down my depression as well, and that was the first of what could be some very bad eruptions ending in the worst kind that affects everyone who loves us.

The next morning I looked into my health insurance and found a psychologist with good reviews nearby. I found someone who I felt based purely on a few lines of text and other superficial nonsense could mesh with me — so I went for it. I mentioned my suicidal thoughts and made an appointment as soon as possible.

When I got to see him we hit the ground running on those thoughts to find out the why, and evolved from there. In just a few sessions we did in fact settle on bipolar which I had been previously diagnosed with. However he was the very first to mention bipolar 2, cite its differences, and how they are relevant to my behavior in every day life.

“I want to kill myself and I think it’s time to talk to someone.”

My psychologist who I am still seeing about 4 times a year then referred me to my psychiatrist who worked with me on the long journey over a year through about 5 pills to find the exact one that would work for me. This is an adventure to say the least, and I will say that my prior drug history allowed me to have a very quick grasp on how different medications affected me. It also gave me a very clear idea of exactly the type of pill I wanted.

I wanted something that I could not feel or tell was in my system whatsoever. Couldn’t even tell a change in my behavior at all, but I wanted everyone else around me to be able to tell. And I found it, Trileptal, Oxcarbazepine, my magical Yin-Yang pill.

Magical is entirely the wrong word and right word at the same time.

Pills are not a magical fix for everything, or even anything. They aren’t magical and especially when it comes to mental health they are a tool in a wide breadth of tools within the box for someone to use. They do not and will not ever fix everything entirely, but they should if used correctly help make it easier for the person to function and be aware of themselves. I was even lucky in that I knew what I wanted and it only took me about 5 pills to get there. I just hope it doesn’t ever stop working.

Pills though are magical in that I often am truly far more in tune with my body and mind and am balanced to boot. Balance is something I have always really had difficulty with, and I always will. The balance that Oxcarbazepine has helped me be able to find along with family support has really made me feel like I am finally in a space where living in tandem with and being open about my bipolar is a healthy thing.

I just need our country and the world to understand that mental illness isn’t a disease that keeps us from being human, or functional, or caring. If there was less of a stigma maybe people would get more help.  I believe there is a vast majority of people out there with mental illness struggling because they are afraid of how they will be perceived. I can assure you it is much more freeing and healthy to just accept it and try to find a way to work with it.

This turned out to be much longer than I was originally intending, but it is an important subject to me.

I believe everyone should talk to a therapist, they don’t even need to be a psychologist.

We as imperfect human beings need an unbiased third party to just dump all our head trash that we don’t want to burden anyone else with. It’s unhealthy to keep those things inside — they can develop into worse problems if not taken care of.

So to bring this back around to the beginning, I went from being staunch about not being bipolar to coming to and understanding years later that it is okay to be so. If you need help, get it. Sometimes even if you don’t believe you need it.

National Suicide Help Line: Call 1-800-273-8255

Please call someone, anyone if you are having suicidal thoughts. Sometimes just talking to someone can make all the difference in the world.

©2017 Trevor Elms