How 9/11 Changed My Life for the Better

It's hard to believe that the terror attacks happened 15 years ago. Yet here we are on the 15th anniversary of that infamous morning. I try my best to be a positive guy, there was a very long time where it was impossible to feel anything but sad on this day. However, with time came enough perspective and I can see how that day turned my life around.

When people ask me about my job, I give them the abridged version. That I started working in radio when I was 10 years old at a super small station and stuck with it all of these years, and that I'm just a normal guy with a really cool job.

However, something I don't really talk to often is a break I took early 2001. Management and I butted heads, I decided I needed a change and got a job in the real world. So, I did.

I got a job working for a bank repair company. Basically it was a company that repairs banking equipment, ATMs, drive through tubes, that kind of stuff. I was a 'video technician' even though I know much anything about video at the time. But I made pretty good money, I learned a lot and ended up being pretty okay at it.

To say I didn't miss being on the radio would have been a lie. I did, I have always enjoyed the pace of radio lifestyle, how no two days/shows are ever the same aspect. I took an easy part time job at another radio group in my hometown where some of my friends worked. Mainly just a scratch that itch of being on the air.

Life was honestly pretty good for a while, and then the morning September 11, 2001.

I was assigned to work on a construction site of a new bank being built in a small city on the outskirts of my hometown. Part of my job including having a little TV that I could use to check all my camera angles. It was a regular TV that could get local channels and just happened to turn it on while I was at a job site. And saw the news that a plane crashed into one of the towers. Then just like everybody else, I was transfixed by the news.

Then, the second plane hit.

I instantly knew I was in the wrong place.

I wanted to leave that work site and go to the radio station to help with coverage. As I lived in a military town I knew this was going to affect a huge chunk of the population. Everybody was either a friend or family member of someone who was in the military. The best thing I could do is use whatever talent I have and help spread the word and try to be a comfort.

I guess, that moment was my breaking point. The point I knew where what I needed to do what I was put on this earth to do.

Honestly, I can't imagine how my life would have worked out if I would have stayed at that repair company. I just know; I'm where I'm supposed to be, and doing what I supposed to be doing.

Every single day I try to do my best to be a good servant to the community, and my promise to you is to keep doing that.