I am Vigilant! You can also feel free to call me Tommy, also just to get this out of the way, feel free to contact me at ANY time! I love hearing from my readers, so you can email/tweet/use the contact form at the bottom to reach me anytime and I will get back to you within a few hours!
My Childhood
I never had a really easy life growing up. At a young age of 8, it seemed I had it all, my parents had a job bringing in nearly 300k+ a year, we had a lofty house in California with expensive cars, we really were living the American dream.
Until the 2008 recession hit with the housing crisis, you see, my dad was in an integral company that suffered the most from the housing crisis and this all happened right after we had moved to Minnesota.
Elementary-Middle School
After freshly moving and poor financial planning for disaster, we were at the end of our road. Paychecks and bills piling up, days we couldn’t afford to even buy cheap dollar menu items at fast food.
Christmas I would not get gifts, and days got worse and worse. I was bullied heavily at school, to the point I had contemplated ending my life every night.
As time went on things didn’t look much better.
I hated waking up and going to school because I would just get bullied and hoped the day would end so I could get back to my computer.
I don’t know why I didn’t take my life back then. I am very glad I chose not to, but I didn’t have a fun time growing up through middle school.
I had a few YouTube channels throughout the years, and while none of them were really successful, I found huge validation by producing content that others found useful and could help them.
I made “funny moments” videos which you can still find that I made nearly 6 years ago on YouTube and see the fun I and David had on those games.
I liked knowing other people could sit back and laugh at the dumb things we did or dumb jokes we made, I liked knowing I could make someone happy with the things we did even if they had a rough day.
Ironically, the only thing I found comfort through was getting good grades, it gave me validation that I was worth something because seeing an A on a test or quiz told me I wasn’t worthless and I could win, my teachers told me what a good student I was, and it kept me going. 7th-grade summer I played roughly 8-12 hours of video games a day, and I don’t regret it, I spent that time with David and I still miss how much fun we had. However, something changed that summer.
That summer I started exercising more, riding my bike a few miles every day and getting outside, I started dieting with CICO and lost tons of unhealthy weight. I went from obese to the standard weight and started taking my body’s health seriously.
Becoming More Active and Giving Up My Past Sedentary Lifestyle
It was around this time I would start progressing more as a person, trying to expand my social circle more and more, and going outside more.
I ended up going outside nearly every day in the summer, hanging out with friends and exploring the wilderness of Minnesota, and having a blast the entire time.
It set a precedent for summers, and me, I slowly joined more activities and tried to make more friends.
Life is way too short to not try to get to know as many people as you can!! I ended up starting to seriously weight-lift 4-7x a week, joined wrestling, started working 30 hours a week with school, and my life has been upwards ever since.
I would like to mention that a few years prior to all of this I had a near-death experience, while it is difficult to talk about, I am more than willing to share with those that are interested if you contact me via the form above or social media/etc.
A key component in this near-death experience was that it led me to go on the path to become a medical doctor.
Infact, I think there’s almost a “curse” on me to become a doctor, I don’t like using the word curse because I would love to become a doctor, but whenever I think of even switching careers, bad things happen. For instance, I had decided I may become a lawyer instead of a doctor in the summer of 2018, and that same day a car accident happened directly in front of me where the passengers needed first aid immediately.
It brought me back to my roots and reminded me I want to be a doctor, but to me, it is still very freaky that many coincidences like this happen.
I work on cars a lot, and have a lot of fun driving around to state parks and spending time with my best friends!
I drive a 2006 4.0 V6 Mustang that was given to me for free after winning a giveaway, and she is my wife!!!!!
I have so many good memories of my friends blasting music and driving to state parks or just hitting the highway and enjoying the cruise together. We’re currently working on buying a 4×4 truck so we can go off-roading together! I’ll keep you all posted!
One of my best friends Chaz runs a blog here: http://Charlesdev.com
Ian and Carsten are my other two besties. We all three call each other apart of the “Stang Gang” and we all seriously weight-lift, work on bettering ourselves everyday, read books, study, and all have a blast exploring the land of Minnesota. We do EVERYTHING together! Take a look at our trip to Taylors Falls, MN! We had so much fun together that day, and Carsten went to Dairy Queen for the first time (which if you haven’t been there, go!!)
Throughout everything in my life, I stay true to my calling as a doctor. I volunteer at a hospital in the emergency room and shadow a doctor to see and understand their thought processes in everything they do, and what calls to make.
I am also apart of a local Fire Department Exploring post, where they give me firefighter and first aid training in preparation to become a firefighter when I finish my FF1 and FF2.
While life has been tough for me, I am glad it happened. I don’t think I would’ve understood the work ethic and struggles people go through without it.
I think it’s hard for many to empathize with the poor, and unfortunately, many people have this belief that it is easy to just get a job and work your way out of debt when in reality there are many immigrants working 60+ hours a week for $9 an hour in their late 40s just to make ends meet.
These immigrants are refused jobs purely because of their past when they have some of the best work ethic I have ever seen.
Without me personally experiencing what it is like to watch all of your friends get supercars paid for by their parents, meanwhile I sit there at the local fast food place for 40 hours a week while in university just to get food at the end of the week, I don’t think I would ever understand the struggles people go through for their families.
I am glad it happened to me, and I am glad I was strong enough to pull through.
I am trying to become an Emergency Medicine Doctor in the U.S Navy, and am always occupied with reading, writing, or lifting!
Thank you so much for reading my About Me page, I hope you learned a lot about me and I would love to learn about you! Feel free to contact me via the form above, e-mail, or social media, I love to talk with my fans! If you’re interested in always getting notified whenever I post or something crazy happens in my life, feel free to subscribe to my newsletter too! I never spam your e-mail, and will never sell your e-mail either, that’s my promise.
