The Big Shift: How I Embraced a New Reality Part I

In 1996, school was over for me and I desperately needed a job. I didn’t want to live under my parents’ roof anymore and was feeling a bit lost. I worked in construction for a while, but it wasn’t for me. I needed something else. At the time, I was in a relationship with my girlfriend. We’d been together for almost 8 years and hadn’t talked about getting married or anything, but it seemed like the natural next step. However, it still didn’t feel quite right to me.

A long-time friend of mine managed to get me a job at the airport working for a security company with TWA as its client. It was great! For the first time in many years, I felt like I had found the right job for me. Little me, who had barely left my hometown, was now dealing with passengers and people from all over the world. It felt right.

It didn’t matter what time I started work. I was pulling 6 am shifts and coming home a few hours later with the rest of the afternoon to myself. Living at my parents’ house and earning my own salary - that was the life, right? Things were good for the next 6 months or so until I got fired. Not because I was doing a bad job, but because the company wasn’t hiring permanent staff at the time.

I was unemployed for a few months, but in April of 1997, I started a new job with another company working with Continental Airlines. It was a new team with a solid operation that had started daily flights from Lisbon to Newark. The team was young - I was no veteran either, having only worked at the airport for a few months - but they were seasoned. Most of them had worked together on previous charter flights.

As the months progressed, I got better and better at my job and started getting attention from my bosses. There were even suggestions that I should take on a more responsible role. But what I didn’t tell you was that I was in a personal relationship with my boss - a clear conflict of interest. The managers said that if I were to take on a supervisory role, I couldn’t work there - I would have to move to another station in Spain.

In my mind, the idea of moving to another country was exciting, but it didn’t happen. There was some drama with my girlfriend who didn’t want me to go and I gave in. I lost my chance there, but fortunately something else happened a few months later - I was hired by another company where conflicts of interest were no longer an issue.

Now, more explanation is needed about my personal relationships at this time in my life. Remember how I told you about that 8-year relationship? Well, it went down the drain after a crazy night and everything changed for me. At 21, I was living “La Vida Loca.” Suddenly, I was in a relationship with an older woman who was more experienced and happy to show me off. She would take me to fancy places for dinner, we would go out to the movies, and we even started traveling. I remember going on a job that involved a cruise ship and being out in the ocean for 3 nights! It all felt so wrong - the simple life I had before was gone.. 

It did start to affect some of the routines I had. I was training in karate regularly at the time and had never missed a single session until then. But around that time, my parents separated and there was a lot of noise in my life. Things started to get out of hand. Way to go on this adult thing… to be continued.