My Everything Story
Luck Is What Happens When Practice Meets Opportunity ~ Demetrius the Cynic
Nervous then Excited & Confident
I want to get into why all of this with Amazon is so important to me that I have been journaling about it specifically and in detail as compared to all of the other opportunities I’ve mentioned in other journal entries. The first post started here, back in October. The second one and third one were me trying to handle to anxiety of the uncertainty, especially the latter one when nothing was going my way. But I managed to find ways to stay optimistic throughout it all.
But first, here is the latest update! I finally heard back from Chris after over 2 weeks. Needless to say I had become very nervous over that time, and started to doubt. I tried very hard to remind myself that he had just went through a terrible loss when he went silent on me and that there was Thanksgiving shortly after that, etc. I wrote about these thoughts previously as well. Then the Sunday after thanksgiving I texted to ask him if he had a good thanksgiving like I did with my other contacts. He immediately responded that he was going to reach out to me that day to set up a call, which he did then and we got on it relatively soon after the scheduled time haha.
It was a VERY exciting call for me. Not only was everything still good, but it had become better as well. He had updates and encouragement and tested me on some hardball items that I crushed... no, I obliterated them. I have to give the credit to this, by “this” I mean years of practicing my writing skills, which has boosted my oration skills off the charts, and the reading habit that has taken my ability to impress with these skills to heights I previously could have never imagined. I texted with him quite a bit that day, catching up on his personal stuff and grief which I won’t go into any more here. I really appreciate the candor we have together, it is healing my ability to trust and give as much loyalty as I expect from others after years of feeling used. The next day we were supposed to get on another call, but plans were disrupted by unexpected changes to his day-to-day this week. We ended up texting for like 3 hours about all sorts of stuff, some of it VERY EXCITING stuff in the future he is planning personally that I was floored and humbled that he wanted to include me.
I’m more confident than ever that I’m on the path I need to be to obtain the dreams I’ve dreamt of for so so long. Why have I dreamt of this? That may be obvious, but that isn’t really why, that’s just the sprinkles on top. Yes, it’s COVERED in sprinkles, but I want to get into that cream filling core, I want to get so into it that I take you into the molecular makeup of that cream filling that is my why. So here we go.
it goes so deep into the center of my existence that I don’t even have to think about “why Amazon”, it just happens for me, like breathing
Why Do I Dream Of This?
First off, to touch base on this again, while it might seem obvious why anyone would want to work for Amazon and why I should want to. I feel like this is a ridiculous idea for me personally. Why would I want to work at Amazon? Why DO I want to work at Amazon? I find myself smirking and chuckling at this while I write it, as it feels like one of those questions that a child asks that are so obvious to an adult that it becomes adorable and exciting to explain. So let me explain why, because I’m excited to share it here. This idea of why I would want to work for Amazon feels like I’m being asked why I would want to breathe, now that just made me laugh out loud to type. I’ve been a fan of Amazon since before most had ever heard of it. I remember so many times having someone ask me where I got something that seemed cool to them because they had never seen anything like it in the stores they went to locally. I would tell them Amazon, and they would ask what that was. When I started to explain that it is online, they would usually either go quiet and move on or say something like, “oh! You gotta be careful buying anything online Jace” and then move on. Every once in a while someone would become motivated to check out the item on Amazon, which was very fulfilling given the context of the last sentence.
The more I look back, I wish I had been buying stock instead of inventory. But I take solace and get great joy in knowing I was part of the contribution towards all the customers that had to trust the platform for it to become what it is today. Amazon is my favorite company and I buy 95% of everything I get on Amazon. I’ve been following it and using it for 20 years, maybe more. I’ve read both of Bezos’ biographies and cried a few times to be candid, because I felt like for the first time in my life as an outsider wherever I found myself that I had finally found my tribe. When I read about Jeff I felt like I was reading about myself, from the booming laugh to the intense desire to devour books, and the intensity to his dedication towards his values. The way he handled things, the leadership principals, his communication style, etc.
I don’t mean to put myself on his level, that’s hopefully not what I hope you have taken from this. What I mean is that there are people out there who are like me, and a whole massive organization of people that many of which have to have personalities like Jeff. I felt like the goose that had grown up his entire existence with ducks and had finally spotted something as ugly as him. But he wasn’t ugly, he was different, and at last he had found his tribe. I don’t live and breath Amazon, that doesn’t event begin to explain it. I AM Amazon, Amazon IS ME. The culture, it’s purpose, all of it goes so deep into the center of my existence that I don’t even have to think about “Why Amazon?”, it just happens for me, like breathing. Even when I become aware of it, like breathing, it doesn’t stop, it can’t stop, it is so deep inside of my entire being that like breathing I would have to die to stop it. I’m not saying I would die for Amazon but weeeell…
I decided to try and focus on my future. To try and take control of it rather than these failures take control of my future.
Failure Defeats Losers & Inspires Winners
When I think of this kind of stuff and what is happening here in my life, it brings me back to that plane flight from San Diego to Florida. I had just gone through the most painful experience I have ever experienced, I thought my life was over and in a sense it was. I had failed at a part of my life that I worked so hard to finally get for myself and I thought for so long that I would never get it. Then in a 10 minute FaceTime, it was over, I failed, and I had no idea what to do next but needed to figure it out in a few days. A few days in which I was having panic attacks so bad that I was sweating non-stop and couldn’t even sleep for those days. I was running on sheer adrenaline at that point, I got what I needed to calm down shortly after that, and got a few more days to figure things out. I wanted to get a place in San Diego, I wasn’t going to fail at being a San Diegan in San Diego too. But there was nothing available, nothing, and I had to accept that I needed to move to Florida to stay with my parents while I figured things out there. Staying with my parents felt like a huge failure too, like I was moving backwards in life, back to a time before I got what I wanted and had just lost.
On that plane to Florida I decided to try and focus on my future, to try to take control of it rather than those failures take control of my future. I wrote 2 letters, one personal, and one professional, they are both extremely personal and intimate, otherwise I would share them in this post. But essentially the personal one defined what I wanted in relationships in the future, platonic, romantic, and all types. I broke it down into 4 parts, “what I think I want”, “what I think I need”, “what I think I don’t want”, and “what I think I don’t need”. This helped me figure out what I learned from everything in my life up until that point, it helped me figure out who I was as a partner, as a lover, as a friend, as a person really. It gave me a new sense of identity, so that I could start to let go of my identity as a husband, being with her, as a San Diegan, as a Californian, and other things that made up almost all of my identity that had just been ripped from me in less than 2 weeks.
The other letter was what I wanted, what I needed, etc to figure out my new professional identity that I was to strive for. I had focused so long on investing in her professional life and goals, guiding her, learning the paths and options for her. I helped her become more than she had ever become, more than I had ever become, and now it was time for me to do the same for myself. I set ambitious goals, not as ambitious as I once wanted, but they were realistically ambitious, based on what I had learned from my journey guiding her and seeing things from the outside.
Then one day, while starting on this new journey to build back up from step 1, I was driving a passenger. A passenger I almost immediately learned was an Amazonian. When he said he worked in Amazon Web Services I responded “Oh yeah? AWS? That’s cool, that’s the biggest most successful part of Amazon”. I later learned that he was blown away by my knowledge and intense interest in Amazon and Jeff’s story that I in part learned from the biographies. We talked the whole hour long ride about Amazon and what we both liked about the company, him from the inside and me from the outside. He asked at one point if I had ever thought about working for Amazon, and I said “well sure, but I know it’s better to know someone than to just apply.” I was telling him about my visceral reaction to Jeff’s biographies when he told me he wanted my number so he could help me get a job there. I feel like “job” is the wrong word, it feels like it undermines what this opportunity feels like to me. When I imagine officially becoming the Amazonian I've felt I am from outside the organization, it feels more like coming home, belonging, or what being in San Diego felt like to me.
I guess to bring this to my point, I set out with intention of what I wanted and was looking for when I arrived in Tampa. Then with my self knowledge and self awareness, I found an opportunity to take that found me. I wasn’t even trying to take the opportunity, it was just there, I didn’t even see it, but it saw me, I had prepared for this moment for 20 years, since I was in middle school buying Pokemon cards on eBay and electronic peripherals on Amazon that I couldn’t find at Fry’s. I wasn’t into books then, I wouldn’t get into Audiobooks for another 15 years, but let’s just say the unlimited access to Audible books is worth working at Amazon alone. Not to say I don’t want to get paid, but that perk is going to save me a lot of cash and buy Amazon more loyalty from me than you could possibly imagine. At 100+ Audiobooks a year at this point, I go hard with the long ass non-fiction books. But I digress, I had planned on what I thought were ambitious goals, but I now see that this opportunity was so far beyond what I could have imagined real that it wasn’t even on my radar to try for. Nassim Taleb would call that a negative black swan. The unimaginable had happened, and I was so prepared that my mind wasn’t the only one blown in that car. I don’t even know if he tipped me in the app, but I don’t care anymore, because the tip he gave me that has led me here is… well, I don’t have to explain it to you.