my summer

Originally posted August 15, 2006

Hey everybody! Well, I'm fine. :D Work's been as tough as ever and I'm just trying to push hard and finish strong. It has come to my attention that a surprising number of you reading this don't actually know what I do, so here goes: I get dropped off in a neighborhood and knock on every single door (excluding houses for sale). When someone actually answers the door (and speaks english) I give them one of two pitches. For people who already have an alarm system, I proceed to tell them, in not so many words, that their old system sucks and they desperately need to upgrade. Luckily for them, we need people to advertise our company and will set them up with the new system for free; they just keep the sign in their yard and pay the monthly monitoring fee. That doesn't sound too hard, right? Well, I forgot to mention that they have to sign a three year contract and pay a monitoring fee of $45 per month, usually twice as much as they're currently paying. Needless to say, it's easier said than done. All that, plus the fact that summer in the south is HOT and that most people hate door-to-door salespeople has led me to the realization that this is hard work.

Besides all that, things have been fine. I'm definitely ready to come home, but that's only because I miss all of you! :D no... I think Atlanta might be a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to make it my home. If nothing else, being here has confirmed that I belong in the Norhwest. :D

This summer has been a mix of happy, sad, lonely, exciting, frustrating, crazy, and a million other things. Someone asked me at church if I had decided wheter or not I was glad I had come. I've come to the point in my life where I regret nothing I do; every experience is important in shaping who we are. Am I glad I left my home and friends, rode a bus for two days, found myself in a strange place with strange people, put myself in occasional danger, and knocked thousands of doors (literally) to make no money? Oddly, I think I AM glad I came. I proved to myself that I could be independent and survive. Even when things got hard and I wanted to quit, I stayed. I conquered my situation and myself to push through. I gained a stronger testimony of God and my faith in Him by being made to question who I was and what I believed. In learning about another religion, I have become more firmly rooted in my own. I've seen and done amazing things that have changed me as a person. I mean, who walks up to a stranger's door and talks to them about something as random as home security? I found myself sitting in the home of a complete stranger eating dinner as though with a friend and realized how far I had come to be even more social than I already was. I've learned that all of life is a sale, if not for a product then for and idea and how to more effectively communicate with a broad range of personalities. I've had my perspective altered by observing the behavior of hundreds of strangers and have determined how I will act in similar situations. Basically, through the hardship, I did manage to have a fairly decent experience. :D I think I'll find in the future that I owe more to this summer than I realize.