You can’t achieve anything entirely by yourself. There’s a support system that is a basic requirement of human existence. To be happy and successful on earth, you just have to have people that you rely on.

-Michael Schur

Jan 10th, 2012.

That day stands out as the day I started talking to a beautiful woman that knew what she wanted in life and fortunately that included being in mine.

Fast forward to September 28th, 2013 and I am marrying my friend, my lover and the person I want to be with for the rest of my life. Unfortunately the boys were still living with their mother. This date was the beginning of everything good that has happened in my life so far.

It’s 2016 and I’m past the point now of knowing I want out of the warehouse. I knew I wanted to do Cyber Security which consisted of me starting over again in classes. Now my two oldest boys “L” and “D” are living with us full time. I could not be happier. It was the best situation for them and something I wanted very badly.

I decided I was going to go to school full time so I could knock out the classes I needed to get my Associates in Cyber Security. My wife, “A”, would make sure that everything was taken care of at home and make sure the boys were where they needed to be while I was working full time and going to school full time.

If it wasn’t for her taking such good care of the children, children that were not biologically hers, I wouldn’t have been able to do what was needed in order to get my degree. She took care of and held everything down while I was going to ISSA meetings so I could network and make sure I knew people when I was done with school. The two years I was in school was very taxing and trying.

I was working full time on the weekends as a warehouse manager and going to school full time during the week. After the 2017 Spring Semester, while working as a warehouse manager on the weekend shift, I took an internship with a Security Consulting Company so I could have the much needed experience for me to get into that field after I got my degree.

I either have drive and ambition that is unrivaled or a hidden level of masochism that I wasn’t aware of. I loved the internship, but I was working 7 days/ 80 hours a week for 4 months between working the internship for 40 hrs a week Monday through Friday and working my warehouse manager job for 40 hrs a week over Friday, Saturday and Sunday. I finished with the internship and headed into my last semester.

Fall semester comes and goes and I now have my Associates. I switch jobs so I can be present for my son’s sports that are all on the weekends (since that’s when I worked). L had just entered High School and I was not going to be absent when he had his sports. I had nobody there for me in high school because I was in foster care and I knew how it felt to look around and have nobody there to support you.

I started working as an Inventory Manager with a Monday thru Friday schedule at what would be my last warehouse job. The pay was good but I HATED that job. Nine months later I get a message from a security recruiter that a company has a security internship available. After some deliberation I made an extremely hard choice and decided to go for it……………..