365 Days of Impacts

In January of 1988, I moved to Atlanta, Georgia from Columbia, South Carolina. The only things I had to my name were a prayer and a smile. I lived with my sister on her pull out couch. Christy always told me a smile is the universal language. A smile disarms a potentially tense situation and my smile got me through so many of these. I did not have a job, but I worked temp jobs until something came along. It didn't take me long to find a job. I basically exaggerated my skillset on the MAC and said I could design newspaper ads. This got my foot in the door at HiFi Buys. I had worked on MACs to do the student newspaper in school, but not to the degree that I led them to believe. Sometimes you have to believe in your ability to learn something new. I knew I could learn it. I knew what I was capable of. So, I didn't have the experience *YET* to back it up. The thing I learned from this time in my life was that if you set your mind to it, you can do it. Believe you can...

My first job ever was a paper route bestowed on me at 12 years old by Matt Hammett because he had outgrown it (that is what happens when you get your drivers license). For the millenials reading this - a paper route was something back in the day when papers were PRINTED and not online, and you had to actually deliver them daily to people who paid for subscriptions. This was before the interwebs and cell phones. I delivered the Macomb Daily to 55 customers through rain, sleet, snow and wind. In the winter I'd load up the plastic sled with my papers, and walk the 55 customer route, delivering the papers to the inside of my customer's storm doors around Charter Oaks and Fox Chase. It usually took about an hour after school. On Sunday's, I would come to "collect". One of my customers nicknamed me the Paper Doll. This would later become my CB handle on trips down to Athens to visit Nana - the truckers LOVED it! In the winter, I would look like the Micheli...