Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. It is 8:20am on March 9, 2018. I come to you from the bottom. I am living my Never Quit Story this very minute.
This is not pretty, this is not cool, it just is what it is, and that to me is the strange beauty of my story.
I have everything going for me. I’m a 13-year Army Veteran, with time in combat. I was in Baghdad, Iraq in 2005. My time in was some of the best day of my life thus far. I’m a full time college student, pursuing my dream of becoming a professional meteorologist.
I have 2 amazing hobbies. As my picture suggests, I get to work on some of the quickest and fastest racing vehicles on the planet…for fun.
I am also a storm chaser…have been for nearly 20 years, and even get paid to take surveys, have been since I got my learners permit at 15.
I have an amazing girlfriend at my side, supporting me through all the trials and tribulations that come my way, and I her.
But, like I said at the start, I come to you from the bottom.
I deal with numbing fear, anxiety, and doubt every waking moment of my life. I feel as if it will all be stripped away from me at a moment’s notice. Compounding that problem is the fact that I have memory loss, stemming from a humvee rollover I experienced in Iraq at the Cross-Sabres in Baghdad. I was thrown from the turret during training, preparing for a Tier 1 PSD mission, and I lost consciousness. I opened my eyes to see nothing but the sun, and an 11,000 pound humvee teeter-tottering on it’s side, seemingly about to roll on top of me. To this day it’s so clear… I can still picture in perfect detail the piece of uparmoring that was going to crush me.
It didn’t. The rollover didn’t kill me. I had literally stared death in the face, and lived to tell the tale.
That is the point of this story.
I am getting help for my fear/anxiety issues. Although it is still a battle every day.
My battle buddy through all this has been the TNQ podcast, not letting me lose sight of the objective of becoming better…just a little bit better every day.
I live. I fight. I continue because in spite of all the fear, anxiety, memory loss, and everything else, I know in my heart that God has a plan for me…I live in constant fear, but I fight with a happy heart every single day because I know that it is all imaginary…even when it seems the most crushing.
From the bottom of my heart, I want to that Wizard, Rut, and Mr. Never Quit himself, for being my lighthouse in perpetually stormy waters. Your example continues to be what I consider the best of what humanity has to offer.
Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
Matthew Schiess