What I love most is learning new things, and there’s no limit to my curiosity when figuring out what to do with the information I’ve learned. As a kid, learning came easily, although I didn’t always know what I wanted to do next.

Like many other young Americans, I started playing sports at a young age. Soccer, baseball, football, and basketball were all part of my life before I was an adult. Eventually, I settled solely on basketball, which was probably a bad idea considering how much I loved soccer and baseball, but we all have our reasons at the time, right? A lot of people think a young, intelligent, uber-athlete would have a tiny bit of life figured out by the time they graduate high school. Attending college? Which one? Major? Minor? Collegiate athlete? Who knows?

I sure didn’t.

I wound up attending my local university, the University of Tennessee at Martin. During my short college tenure, a semester, I learned plenty. I tried out for the university’s basketball team and made it. I did well enough during practices that the head coach told me he was putting me on scholarship the following semester. This is also when I figured out I didn’t just want to learn anything. This was easy to figure out since I had a music class scheduled for Mondays at 8 AM. Eventually, I stopped going to my classes, which I never read the syllabus for anyway. Come January of the new year, I didn’t bother returning to school.

I started working when I was 16 years old. McDonald’s was the only place that would hire me. My mom always told me, “A man needs a job.” So while working, I played basketball recreationally. Not two months into the same new year I quit school, I tore my ACL playing basketball. It was during my rehab time that I walked into a mixed martial arts gym with a family member who was a fighter. I FELL IN LOVE! I tried to start training with my knee brace on. My soon-to-be trainer came over and basically told me to get off his mats with the knee brace on in the most blunt way possible haha.

Once my knee was cleared, I started training immediately and fell deeper in love with the sport. MMA gave me the opportunity to keep my body in excellent shape, the ability to learn new things constantly, a family, and to compete at a high level. I eventually became a professional mixed martial arts athlete, and then it happened.

KIDS

I was a great fighter well on my way to the big show, but I wasn’t there yet. With multiple mouths to feed, I had to make a decision: keep persevering and wait for my opportunity at the big show or call it quits and find a real dad job. I chose the latter, which led me to tech school. Since then, my journey has been non-stop, filled with constant learning!

There will always be a part of me that wonders what if, but there’s also a part of me that knows I’m doing just fine, and there’s more to come.