I doubt anyone will really read this, but when I start a blog site, I always start with where I have been. Then goals, and then through the blog it's a voyage to see if I made it where I wanted.
My name is Luke, I'll be 25 years old in 3 months. I currently live in Garner, Iowa. I work at the Casey's here and we just opened up our full pizza making kitchen on Dec. 28th... We haven't recovered since. I have one extremely fat cat named Funny. She's getting near the end of her mortal line, which really makes me sad. I've been visiting petco a lot to see who I like. If I didn't have a cat, I'd probably have lost it long ago. I also direct my church's choir, and am hoping to write some original music for them to perform at the end of the season.
Well that's where I am now... let's take a look at how I got there. (The Boring Part)
I was born in St. Luke's (ha) Hospital in Sioux City, IA. My mother worked at the Sioux City Journal, and my father had just decided to become a minister. He enrolled in Westmar College in Le Mars, IA a couple years before I was born. He served a United Methodist church in Seney, IA as a student pastor while we lived in a small trailer in Sioux City. I don't have many memories of that time. When I was 3, dad got his Bachelor's degree in Theology (first one in his family) and we moved out west.
Dad enrolled in the Iliff School of Theology in Denver, CO. We lived 130 miles from Denver in a place called LeRoy... which consisted of the church and our house. If you care to know where, it's about 20 miles from Sterling, CO. I started Kindergarten, had my first crush, had my first kiss, all that fun stuff. If you care to know the details, I'll tell them... but this is gonna be long enough as is. After first grade, when I was 7, dad got his master's degree and we returned to Iowa. To Bedford...
I met some good people in Bedford. I had the lead in my first play. (the villain of course). Won best actor in the class for it too (it's better than an oscar). During this time I also learned I loved to write. So many ideas for stories I'm working on now came from games we used to play at recess. This is where I learned my imagination was the one thing no one could ever take from me. Ever. It's also where I was assigned the instrument I thought I hated... the trombone. 5th grade band was starting, and we went through the basics, start with the recorder, learn to read, play for teacher. Then we would go through and try the types of instruments we wanted. I wanted either the saxophone or the trumpet. I could not get the reed to vibrate, and I couldn't get a good sound out of that tiny brass mouthpiece, but the slightly bigger one I played just fine. I remember when she had us listen to a high school rehearsal, she had each instrument play a bit and a show of hands what we wanted to play. No one raised their hand for the trombone... then Mrs. Davis made the announcement... I got the trombone. 4 years at Bedford, then at age 11...
Kingsley, IA... If you ask me where my hometown is... I will tell you it is Kingsley. The only time I ever felt sure of who I am was in Kingsley. This small town 24 miles from Sioux City is why I am who I am today. Finding out that the church was sending us there made my family question a lot. A minister isn't supposed to serve too near his home where he grew up. Kingsley is a 20 minute drive from the farm he grew up on. It's an 8 minute drive from the McCulloch Funeral Home where my mom grew up. So yeah... we were surprised.
I entered the Kingsley-Pierson school district at the start of 6th grade... aka hell. If we followed the trend and only stayed for 3 or 4 years... I'd have hated that town. My first 3 years there nearly drove me to the end. I've never felt like such a failure before then... and I wouldn't again until college. My grades fell apart, a guy at school delighted in tormenting me, and of course we had assigned seating on the bus...so guess who got to sit by him... Band was horrible, they were more advanced than I was. My whole trombone section dedicated itself to making me feel horrible. I had nothing I felt good about. I had no skill I could be proud of, nothing... That's when I found some support... in my dad's church.
The whole church took me under their wing, they had me making peanut brittle, I took piano lessons from our organist who eventually had me cover the church organ for her. I started getting my self confidence back. I wound up outlasting the rest of my section, they just didn't like band anymore. I went from being the black sheep to Mr. Washburn's only choice. I had to carry a whole section myself, so I stepped up my game and took on the rest of Jr. High by the horns.
In high school I was actively involved in the fine arts. I was in speech, drama, band, choir, jazz band, and jazz choir. I had so much fun acting. Doing improv in speech was a special joy for me. Making a whole audience laugh at my bizarre antics like the cast of Whose Line thrilled me. I consistently got I's in improv, and I loved it. I took my ACT, got a composite of 30, which at the time was the highest in KP history. Scored in the 99th percentile on my ASVAB, which had the military trying to offer me a job. I blew out my knee in choir rehearsal... long story. That's an injury that sticks with me still today. I got a I on my Tromone solo my senior year. My reader's theatre group was selected for Iowa All-State Speech honors. I earned the eponymous role in my high school's production of The Nerd. (Look it up, it's a hilarious play). When I took my AP Calc test, they rate you from 1-5. 1 being the lowest, saying you were not ready for more advanced math in college, 5 being the highest... I got a 5. When I went to UNI for a statewide scholarship competition, I got 3rd place, and a whole whopping 500 dollar one time scholarship. Yeah... cheap freaks... Before I graduated another student one year below me earned a 31 on her ACT... grrrr... And I discovered Simpson College...
Simpson College had everything! At the time I was going to study math, and Simpson's math department beat any college I've ever seen, even ISU. Their theater department was fun, the professors who watched my audition made it clear to the math professor that they needed me, so he better get me. Simpson just felt right. But they were slightly higher in price than another college... and well... in the one decision I will always regret for the rest of my life... I picked my pocketbook over my heart. I let my mother's fear of poverty send me in a cycle that would eventually lead to poverty... I chose...
Morningside College. Sioux City... full circle... How I felt in jr. high? Nothing compared to what I would go through here. I did pretty well my first year, only 2 C's... one of which was from who many at the college regarded as the hardest prof. I took a 300 level class that shouldn't even be open to freshmen because it was too hard and aced it. I met new friends in band and life was... well not going up, but hey, it wasn't going down...
Then my 2nd year... when my priorities all went out of order and I started to lose everything. I earned section leader for the Tbones... and that was the one thing I am proud of that year. I met Autumn, and before long fell head over heels for her. She liked another guy... story of my life right there. My attempts to win her kept failing, and I kept pouring more and more of myself into that stupid pursuit... My grades tanked, but I didn't care it was worth it. I finally won her over on New Year's Day 2007, and we started dating, and after a few months of dating, found out that she hadn't really given up on her old flame... That hurts... but I was so blind and stupid that I forgave her. We started drifting apart, I started not caring about anything, my grades tanked even farther to the point that the college was starting to have concerns about me. I didn't care... I hit levels of depression you could not imagine. Then the dream started... one that involved me seeing everyone I care about going through the most grotesque and horrifying death possible... I still have that nightmare today... it is what causes the insomnia I go through. I decided to take back control and wanted to study music. So I switched my major from Math and Philosophy to Music. I loved it, Music theory ranked with my AP Calc class in my list of all time favorite classes. I decided I wanted to compose music. My parents were not so thrilled on the idea, and Autumn said she was but... I still remember going to her for help (she was also a music major, with a few more years' experience) and all she could do was talk about how she couldn't see me being a conductor, or how dumb I was that I couldn't just get my chord names like that.
We broke up for 9 hours one summer, I have my own theories on the behind the scenes battle there, but the next year was dreadful. She became almost like a venom in my veins. I retreated so far inward I had nothing left... but yet... I claimed I still loved her. Despite all the emotional damage I was doing to myself, I was afraid of being alone. I didn't have the guts to end it right there and pull myself out of the gutter. I don't even think you could say we were even dating then, I hardly saw her. I pushed everyone away, but hey... it was worth it right? I again listened to my mother telling me that composition was not going to support a family, so I changed back to math so I could earn the money to support Autumn and myself. Turns out her parents finally used that change against me. They told her I obviously had no direction in life if I kept changing my major, so they convinced her to break it off with me. I don't think I even cried. By then I was already dead inside. My fifth and final year at Morningside, I struggled to assume some type of identity. Most of my friends had been pushed away, and the few that weren't had decided I was nothing. Autumn and I tried to rebuild a friendship, but there were always some weird things. She'd say something that would hurt me, I'd say something that would hurt her. Now we're pretty ok... but then... ugh.
The depression finally hit fully that last semester. After 5 years, Morningside pulls your financial aid, I couldn't finish either of my half degrees so I just kind of gave up. I just stopped trying. I left Morningside with a whimper. Then I tried to enter the job market. Worked as a courtesy clerk for Fareway... for two weeks. Then I found what I thought was my niche. I became a pawnbroker for Mr. Money.
I hated the customers, but loved my job if that makes sense. I thrived. My manager loved me. She told me she had never seen anyone with my work ethic. After 4 months, she promoted me to head pawn clerk. I wanted to manage a Mr. Money store someday. I loved my company. Then they sold out. EZPawn.....
EZPawn at first wasn't so bad, they wanted to keep everything the same... then they changed everything. I lost my promotion. A guy who had walked in our store and met us for 20 minutes decided who should get the equivalent promotion. Everyone else got to keep their current job, I lost mine to someone I trained. I was in the top 100 for pawns per minute in the whole freaking district! I had customers passing on being helped by other clerks in favor of being helped by me. I was known as the compassionate one who never gave up on a customer... And some idiot in Chicago who didn't even spend an hour with us decided to give the promotion to someone else because her sales were higher... Yeah because she ignores the pawn side of the industry... but whatever. Life at the shop became hell and I had it. One day I just snapped and quit... but if you listen to my manager, I was fired.
So now I had no money to keep my house in Ames, no job... nothing... My mom was working for the paper in a town called Garner, and was talking to people at Casey's. It was formerly Kum & Go, but they didn't want the store anymore so they offered to sell it to Casey's. I had a couple summers experience working in a Casey's kitchen, so Teresa, our area supervisor, told my mother to have me apply. I did, got an interview... then nothing. I kept stopping back to see if I got the job. Then right after scheduling another interview with a different company, Linda called and offered me the job. I started immediately and am still there now. A month after that, I took up the reigns of my church's choir. I arranged their first song for them, and then we dove in to our cantata... which they performed beautifully.
While working at Casey's I met my best friend, Manda. She's the one that got me started on this site. Through that friendship have come a couple more, some of them are ok people, a few are freaking amazing. I'm starting to get my confidence level back. My goal to be a composer or comedian... well one is coming true. Some film students have seen my youtube videos and want me to do the music for their films. I keep writing stories or songs just to say I keep writing. I hope to one day write something that inspires someone the way Holst or Crichton or Powell or anyone has inspired me. I hope to have a family and keep my close friends. That is my dream. I'll have to wait and see if I reach it.
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