In high school I was average. Average grades. Average hair. Average everything. I wasn’t popular, or the weirdo—and for the record—I wasn’t the slut either. My upbringing wasn’t one that would appear on Oprah. I came from a good family, a family I still go home to on the holidays because I miss it so much.

In college I was average. It was the exact same story as high school, except I wasn’t forced to study things I hated. I majored in English and minored in photography. But when I got my diploma, that ticket to a new life, something was off. Something was deadly wrong, and it wasn’t the champagne we all got drunk with. It was me.

Life stood in front of me, my future was in the palms of my nervous sweaty hands. It terrified me, it made me uneasy. So the next day, hungover, I grabbed a newspaper and found a job listing for a mailroom position.

At the time, everyone thought I was hiding from life but really I was trying to figure it out. I was looking for a life light to show me secrets to my future.