From Amish to MBA

I grew up Amish, and I wrote a short story called Amish Memories. Growing up I used to do the strawberry sales and baked goods from the back of the buggy or the side of the road and even carried the baked good to the neighbors and as a young 5 year old started charging $3.25 for the pies instead of $3.00 that my aunts asked me to charge for them. That was my first entrepreneurial efforts, to, instead of relying on tips, I was now charging a delivery fee.

Today I am a 40-year-old man, my birthday was this month (November) and last year I got my MBA. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find a steady job since COVID hit, but I have my writing and have done a few things to survive the summer. I got into doing drug trials to make it through the last few months.

Getting my MBA though was a major achievement, as it is the only one in my family that got to do that. I am from a family of 11 children, one died in a car-buggy accident, my father was in a car crash that paralyzed him in the late 90s, and I was in that accident with him. It was one of my half-dozen head concussions that I endured growing up, as you can read in my book. I probably had about half a dozen head concussions. It was a struggle to concentrate to get assignments done, but I did it, I got through the courses and got my MBA.

I was not going to mention this but another issue is that my wife and mother to my four children, including my twins, married for 20 years, left last year following a growing concern for her mental health. She had no children for 10 years and then started telling everyone that she was pregnant with at first a set of triplets, and had me take her to the hospital to tell them that she had miscarried one of her babies. She was not pregnant but had one of the twins who also has the same chromosomal abnormality to confirm this pregnancy and other delusions with the angels. The girl of course did not want to disappoint her mother so she confirmed it. The poor girl has no reason to not confirm her mother's stories.

But I was also then had to send my other daughter to a group home to give her a future. She is now in college and doing well. But her sister and her mother have not spoken to us in over a year. I miss my daughter, but what can I do?

I met a guy working for AutoZone the other night while I was buying a part for my truck and he commented about getting his MBA in the near future, so I told him a little bit of my story. He said he had lost a job where he was earning 75K a year and did all that work on his MBA only to lose his job, and now is selling car parts at AutoZone. I told him we just have to continue, no matter what the future hold.

I will be getting my last unemployment check on Tuesday. I still don't know what will come next, but I will be doing what I can to make an income. I have a few leads on what I can do, but as I told this guy, you just have to keep going, no matter what the world throws at you, including family, mental health, and COVID.