June | Post College and Change | Week 24 | 6/18/2023
Describe the year you lived in Winston Salem
It's fascinating in life how we discover our limit - how much can we take before we fold. It was only months after I'd moved to Charlotte, the city of my dreams for half a decade, that I stepped away from it. That fourth rotation in Charlotte was an odd one. I'd been in Spartanburg, Jacksonville, Detroit and Seattle, with dreams of Charlotte the entire time. But, COVID lockdowns ensued almost immediately after I arrived. I was beyond grateful to be living with my brother and his wife, looking back now that serendipitous timing was a major blessing. About 3 months went by, locked indoors, finding ways to occupy free time and avoid working too much. Life had given me the opportunity to be in the city I'd fallen in love with, but with limited opportunity to enjoy it. And so when opportunity knocked, I answered. I was offered a role, launching a new Amazon fulfillment center 1.5 hours north of Charlotte, in a sleepy, relic of a town, called Winston Salem - the birthplace of mass produced cigarettes. I didn't know what I was going to do after my 4th rotation, nobody did, and so being offered a prestigious job launching my own site, not even 4 months into my final rotation, I felt that I'd be foolish to turn it down. In June 2020, less than 5 months after I'd moved to Charlotte, I packed up my life once more and relocated to Winston Salem. It felt like an investment, and I was willing to pay the price of being 90 miles from Charlotte if it meant career advancement. Thinking I'd only be there 6 months, I decided to live in a long term Airbnb, in a quiet suburb outside the city. It was a finished basement, all of about 500 sq feet, under the house of a very sweet family, in a neighborhood which felt safe and comfortable. The dungeon, as I lovingly called it.
I moved to Winston Salem with counteracting emotions: fervor at the opportunity of my life to that point, and resentment, that I would once again commit a portion of my young adulthood to "what I could get" not "what I wanted". I spent the first 12 weeks working 10 hour days in the fulfillment center, masked up, meeting the team. I spent the evenings running, my new-found passion with the gyms being closed. And I spent the nights studying coding and computer science as I'd set my sights on a career switch to AWS at some time in the future. On the weekends I commuted back to Charlotte, to stay at Connor's new house, trying to convince myself that I was only temporarily living in Winston Salem. Long story short, 6 months turned into a year, a girlfriend, a new life, and a period of personal growth which was shocking.
From June to October, I truly did nothing but work, exercise, sleep, repeat. There were weekend trips and outings with the team, there were friend visits and interesting side quests. But the majority of my time was spent adapting to my new environment; learning how to sleep in that cold basement, learning how to feed myself in between work and having a minimal kitchen, learning which coworkers I could trust and how the team really felt about each other. All the while I was gaining a skillset which is hard to replicate. Life is a social game and a marathon. If you want to find yourself at the top, you have to embrace the mundane - the training, the repetitions, the discipline that allows for one to be prepared for a marathon. And yet you must remain alert, steadfast and socially apt, in order to master your environment, stay out of trouble, and make the right friends. I did just that. 9 months into my tenure at that job, I found myself on the winning team, who'd essentially thrown a coup, ousting poor leadership in favor of our cabal. Middle managers became senior leaders, and we found ourselves truly in charge of the site. For good reason I must add, the leadership was ill prepared, rapidly failing, and corrupt, and we had vision, energy, and trust.
In late October 2020, I went on a date, with a girl I'd met online. One date turned into 3 and the next thing I knew I was in a relationship. She was a sweet, low-maintenance, steady girl. I would go home from work, exercise, shower and head over to her house, where she was waiting for me with dinner made and desert in the oven. I'd sit with her, ask her about her day and get the low-down on the latest work drama. It was cathartic for her to spill the details of her day to me, and I was more than happy to listen and advise, given the hospitality. Then, she wanted to snuggle up and watch Hallmark movies. When it was time to leave, she'd fight it in a cute way which became something of a tradition between us, but she'd ultimately let me leave, with plans set up for sometime in the future. She let me live my life, a mostly solitary one, focused on my career and my fitness. And I respected her for that.
As the year came to an end, I'd really found my rhythm. I'd mastered my job, helped turn the site around, gained regional recognition as a finance leader, become an excellent runner, developed a great relationship with the family who lived above me, and found a girl who supported me and added to my life. I'd even come to like Winston Salem. I'd found my favorite running routes, my favorite pizza place, my favorite Sunday routine, and my preferred days were abundant. Taylor reignited my interest in domesticity during that holiday season. She showed me how a woman could make a hearth and a home - something I was desperate for having been on the road for almost 3 years. When I was with her, in that dimly-lit, one bedroom apartment, smelling of cedar and gingerbread, watching Christmas movies by the tree, I felt at home. She felt like home. And for a second, I almost forgot I was in Winston Salem.
In the last few weeks of the year, after a bachelor party in Gatlinburg, I came down with Covid, isolated with a strange new disease in my dungeon. During that time, my family dog died. I missed Christmas and New Years celebrations. But the family upstairs and Taylor made it all okay. They dropped off food. They checked on me. I was overcome with emotions on Christmas day, from the kindness I was experiencing from people I barely knew. It was a powerful lesson in my life that I'll never forget. And thus 2020 came to a close.
As the page turned and 2021 began, I came back from a delayed trip to Florida with eyes more wide open. I'd fallen into a stupor of satiation the last 2 months. I'd fallen into a rhythm, in a place I'd once considered temporary, and it was time to get back to my goals. It's important in life to rest. There are seasons in our lives to take the foot off the gas, perhaps even pump the breaks, but there are moments when one must remember their dreams. My dream was Charlotte, a job in tech, and start of my Golden Years. So I started interviewing. I moved out of the basement into an apartment downtown Winston Salem, and I began to pull away from Taylor. I had to detach from my life there, a life I'd become comfortable and content with, if I was going to be able to ultimately make the leap.
By March 2021, I'd secured the job of my dreams - a finance analyst role with a tech team based in Seattle, that would set me up to get the next promotion, with a leader who's resume I wanted to emulate. And best of all, they didn't care where I lived, which meant I could finally, and perhaps permanently, relocate to Charlotte. I began making arrangements to move, but before I did, I took one more look around me and soaked in the experience I'd had.
From June 2020 to May 2021 I called the small town of Winston Salem, home. It wasn't a glamourous existence, working as a finance analyst in a fulfillment center out in the countryside, living in the basement of a suburban family. But I'd made it home. That public track on the west side of town that I'd go to run, that pizza place by the mall I'd pick up food from on Friday nights, and that one bedroom apartment with Taylor that offered a reprieve, weary from my travels. It was time to leave, to continue the progression of my life, but it would not be forgotten.
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