OK, so, I know I haven't always been what might be considered a Model Citizen or Typical. I quit high school and joined the Army when I was 17, broke my back in basic training but being a Bruce I shrugged it off and did 3 years as a scout for a tank battallion. I got out when I was 20, and since then I've done a ridiculous amount of different jobs, from parking cars to being a drilling fluids engineer and working for CNN to having the 2nd late night food cart in Austin Texas, the first and for many years only cart in the just flourishing Warehouse District. Did a fair amount of stupid stuff and despite what have apparently been my best efforts, if I died and went to heaven when I got there I would be dissappointed. In almost everything I've ever done it's really worked out well. I've crashed and burned a few times for sure but you can count them on one hand. I think the thing that made all these crazy jobs work out was that I never did anything that I didn't know I could do. When my friend Joseph asked me one afternoon if I thought I could fly a plane back from Port Mansfield to Cameron County I said 'absolutely' because I knew I could. And I did. When I decided to bake and sell cheesecakes to just about all the hotels and restaurants on South Padre Island everyone told me how hard it was going to be and how it would be almost impossible but I did it because the day I decided to do it, I knew I could. Same thing with the hot dog cart. I walked out of Lavaca Street Bar one night and there wasn't anything to eat so I decided in about 5 seconds that I was going to buy a hot dog cart, serve hot dogs and water and nothing else. I quit my job at Dell where I was making bank but I knew I could make the hot dog cart work. And I did, for almost 8 years because I knew I could do it. You can't listen to other people telling you how hard it is or why you can't do something. Their intentions are good but they don't know you. Every obstacale you run into you don't freak out about you just roll over it. It was like I was trying to get a permit to throw old people off a building when I went to get my permits for the cart in Austin but I just rolled over all of them. Because I knew I could do it. You have to know that no matter what you want to do, how or where you want to live, you have the ability to do just that, to be where you dream of and be the person you want to be. And the funniest thing about it is this.. no matter how much well intentioned comments on how dumb I was to try to do something, being where and who you want to be isn't difficult at all, it's incredibly simple to do. The only thing required is that you have confidence in who you are with all your good points and flaws and when you accept who you are nothing anyone can say or do can stop you. I swear, I am about the laziest person you'd ever meet... not that I sit around all day or anything, I've worked my ass off most of my life... and I've done OK because I knew I could. I decided I could do those things. And I did. And if I can, you can. I'd like to think my heritage has something to do with it but then again, if I can do it, anyone, with any other heritage can do it to. It's pretty cool actually to be really honest. I highly recommend it to everyone.