John Maxwell:  

Life Where to start? After graduation I did the college thing without truely knowing what I really wanted to do, so I finished one year while totally slacking and went out into the world and worked. After leaving job after job realizing that I would not be able to support myself without going to college, I went on a soul search to find that perfect career for myself. It ends up that I wanted to become a firefighter and I started to make that happen by going to Chemeketa Community College in Salem and became a resident volunteer firefighter at Polk County Fire District in Monmouth. (I was 23 at the time.) After a 2 year stint there, my Pop (Stepfather) ended up getting a head injury and I moved back to Eugene to be closer to my parents and my girlfriend at the time. I moved in with my girlfriend and unhappily stayed for another 3 years with her until I decided that I was tired of the abuse, meanwhile working at Jerrys home improvement. In 1995 I got married to a nice woman with 2 children and did the dad thing, all the while volunteering as a firefighter and keeping my dream alive. One of the boys (Jacob) was two years old and I adopted him. I loved being a dad and worked at Jerrys and then Oregon Medical laboratories until 1998 when my wife encouraged me to go back to school and get my Paramedic. I went back to Chemeketa, got my paramedic and finally got hired as a firefighter/paramedic at Bend Fire Department... Unfortunately two bad things were happening. First, I was the oldest guy in my recruit class and I let myself go physically and just wasn't a good fit with their department. I ended up leaving after about 4 months disheartened and feeling like a failure. I really began to wonder whethe...Expand for more