My final semester for my undergraduate degree is in progress and I am very excited about this semester. I have worked so very hard for the past 3.5 years and now I have the chance to enjoy being in college a little bit. I am a full time student, however this semester I am taking some relaxed classes and I will have more time to focus on healing and not stressing myself out. I also just started back up at my other job, but I have requested to not work weekends at all. This is giving me the opportunity to have two days to relax, study, and just be a normal college student. I want to enjoy my college experience as much as possible while I am still a kid…so to speak. I know that I only have one life to live, so I want to live it to the fullest. Every day is a new day for me and I am taking full advantage of that knowledge today. I am seeking out my zest for life again and it will be found. I have so many opportunities in front of me right now and I want to take advantage of as many of them as possible and to the best of my ability. I also know what my purpose is in life more today than I ever have before. My purpose is to help people in any and every way I possibly can. I have the opportunity to help people who are seeking out their majors in school, trying to figure out what graduate school to attend, figuring out how to study correctly, wondering if they should or should not do an internship, learning who professors are and what their focus is, and so much more. I also hope to soon have the opportunity to help the speakers who work for notMYkid have their goals met in any way I possibly can. It is wonderful to be able to experience life to the fullest degree and be one of the few survivors who actually make it into recovery and make a difference. Not everyone makes it out of addiction alive and/or with any chance at a normal life, but I did and I am going to take full advantage of it.

I have been given so many unbelievable opportunities in the past three and a half years, and every one of them has been related to my sobriety in one way or another. My life itself is pretty much one big example of this: my scholarship, my family life, my friends and the people I love most in my life are all a result of my sobriety. I can say with complete confidence that if I didn’t have my sobriety I wouldn’t have any of these things.
Today I had one of those opportunities. I was asked to be on a show called T4, which is basically a new talk show coming out that is going to be talking about different things that teenagers face in our wild and crazy world. So I was able to go onto a set and tell a bit of my story and further spread the message of Not My Kid!
I am very lucky to be involved in an organization like Not My Kid. The message that we have is an important one and I definitely consider myself lucky to be able to have all of the opportunities to spread this message. Keep an eye out for the new show, it’s supposed to air on channel 9 starting April 4th! The website gives a pretty good explanation of what it’s all about, http://www.t4talkshow.com/
Keep Livin’ the Dream!
Patrick