Tag: #iamthankfullife #education #journey #adventure

Let’s Try this Again!

I started an idea in 2016 and I was not able to stick with it. iamthankful.life was born and it was never nutured. I would succumb to my lifetime struggles with ADHD and my addiction to alcohol.

It would be a year later that I would seek help for my addiction. I have learned to be thankful for the life I have since then. In the 5 years since my abstinence from alcohol, I have obtained a Master’s in Higher Education, a graduate certificate in Addiction and Substance-Use Related Disorders, and have completed my first year of a PhD in Addiction Disorders and Recovery Studies.

We do succeed. Many of us have had to overcome obstacles and many are facing them now. No matter the situation, we have to help ourselves get better and then we have to help others. I am thankful for this life as it is the only one I know I have. I will continue to help those in need and encourage them to help others too.

I will continue to write and share my stories and those I encounter. There is always something to be thankful for and when you help someone else, you will feel it.

Mark “Stitch” Mills

My Road Ahead

The earth spins about 1040 miles per hour. I often think I have made decisions about my life going faster than that. Seeing that fork in the road and instead of stopping to see what the signs read, I often picked a direction and kept moving forward. I thought I was moving forward most of the time. This could very well be the reason I took the long way, the scenic route, the road less traveled to get where I am today.

So where is here on my road right now? Right now I am a Phoenix native living in Boston working on my Master of Social Work degree employed by a local hospital for their psychiatric unit. I haven’t had to check in myself, but that can always change depending on my road ahead. This would be the best time to stop and read the signs before barreling through picking random directions. I am also working on a business that will change the world, but that mountain isn’t in front of me yet and it looks smaller in the distance than it appears to be.

The college has blessed me with an opportunity to visit Uganda for three weeks this summer. So many wonderful firsts will happen when I board that plane. The two big ones would be leaving the continental U.S. for the first time and the other being given the chance to interact with a culture so unique and different from anything I have experienced so far. I get excited thinking about it like a child with a birthday coming up.

We have been preparing for the trip since the 2015 fall semester. There were applications and acceptance letters, needles involved (I received three shots in two minutes), passports to be stamped, visas to be approved, and many other check list items. When each one was accomplished and checked off, I got more excited. I was taking the time to read the signs and pick the direction I was heading to next.

What will I be doing in Uganda? Besides being over stimulated, I am there to learn, observe, help, and have fun with the community. We have schools, hospitals, and clinics to visit. Each one will carry its own purpose and I will write about what I drew from the experience. The country has one of the lowest per capita incomes in the world as well a high incidence of AIDS. I am bringing 100 brand new t-shirts to hand out and 2,000 condoms to give to clinics and hospitals while I am there. I will also bring my smile, hope, energy, and my sense of humor. (I get a discount on condoms now if you ever need to buy in bulk!)

In the upcoming blogs, I will go into more details about my preparation for this journey and provide information on the background of Uganda and the many issues the country faces. With the earth spinning as fast as it is, I hope to take the time and read all of the signs and pay attention to details while enjoying the journey. Using a little humor and a lot of love, I hope to share this unique adventure in the hopes that we will all learn from my road ahead.

I Went Down a Different Road

I graduated college in 2012 with my Bachelors of Science in Applied Biological Sciences. It was the greatest accomplishment of my life. My mother, father, grandmother, aunts, cousins, and fiance were there to celebrate my achievement. It was never a question of whether I could do it, but rather when. When I started college, I was actually engaged to someone else and all of my grandparents were still alive. I remember how exciting it was, but also how unprepared I was mentally.

I took a nursing assistant course at a local community college a couple of weeks after graduating high school. I did well and started a full-time schedule for the fall. Halfway through that first semester I dropped out. Saturday morning biology classes and lab were not such a good idea. So I got married instead and focused on moving across the country to where my new wife was stationed. It would be a nice break and I could start-up school when I settled.

But I never got settled. Things went wrong one after the other. Before I could ever leave home, my brother (my mentor and best friend) was killed in a motorcycle accident on a Friday night two days before Christmas. I rode on the back of that bike the night before. He and I had already swapped and opened our presents, watches. My father still has the watch I gave my brother, I have lost the one he gave me along this journey. It would be one of many things lost along the way.

Moving for the first time is hard enough, but moving across country after such a tragedy is too much for anyone. Leaving behind my family and an unborn niece was difficult, but I moved anyway because I had a new beginning and wife waiting for me. School was in trimesters there and I signed up right away for a couple of classes. After the second week, the engine in my car broke down and needed to be replaced. We couldn’t afford it and I dropped out again. No school, no car, and no friends yet, so I turned to alcohol. I drank and I drank and before I knew it, two years had gone by, my niece was alive and well and I was back at home divorced.

Christmas day two years after my brother’s passing I would meet a girl at my grandparents residence. She was from out-of-state visiting her dad down the street. She was smart and encouraged me to go back to school. I enrolled again in community college and took two classes. I completed this semester of college. She would later move to my state and in two years I graduated from community college. She had just finished her first year at the university. She encouraged me to continue school, I encouraged her to drink.

My first semester at the university went horrible. I did not drop classes because I drank quite frequently and would forget to. In forgetting to do so, I failed two classes.  My GPA was 1.25 that first semester. I would transfer from my smaller campus to a bigger one to be closer to the one girl who still had faith in me. That faith was soon lost and she would later leave me because she graduated and I got kicked out of school with a GPA of 0.75.

It would take four years before I would enroll in school again. However, I changed one thing, I had quit drinking for a year already. The university would not take me until I completed and passed courses at a community college first. Two successful semesters I was able to transfer back to the very university that suspended me. I went full-time for two years including summers. Passed every class except one which I was able to retake. I graduated at the age of 37.

I jumped right into graduate school that spring and I passed both my classes. Shortly after, my fiance decided she was not ready for marriage. I tried summer school and felt myself struggling again. A misunderstood posting on social media and I was once again asked to leave the university. I maintained my sobriety through that ordeal and two years later I found a graduate program on the east coast. My grandmother had encouraged me to go and I have completed my first year, but it was a rocky one. My grandmother passed away this past January and I barely passed one of my classes,  but I stayed the course.

I am thankful I have continued to try, fail, and eventually succeed over the span of my life. I took a different route and I can tell this same story a dozen different ways. I could point my finger for all the reasons it didn’t work out the way it should have and blame anyone but myself from the beginning. However, I am where I am now for a reason. I have founded a new company called iamthankfullife and soon I will use that to help others who have gone down different roads themselves. Not just in education, but from all aspects and angles of life.

My journey and education continue this summer while studying abroad in Uganda. It will be a new experience and a way to continue learning in a different environment. I hope to document this adventure as well as to start iamthankllife to inspire others to continue going down a different road.

Thank you for reading and I will tell you more about my next journey as the time gets closer.