This is optimal living daily episode 400, the 30 year old college student by George Stone Cipher, and I'm Justin Molick. Wow, 400 episodes, where did the time go? If you're new here, this is where I read blogs to you, usually, sometimes books, and even occasionally essays from college students. The last one of those was episode 365, the one year mark of this podcast.
And today for the 400th episode, I wanted to do it again, something special, a little different, but incredibly beautiful and well written. This is coming from Appalachian State University again, from Dr. Chris Patti's class. He's a really good friend of mine since fifth grade.
We've been questioning our realities together for as long as I can remember, and also play music together for a good 15 years or so. Anyway, he created an assignment for a student space around this podcast to write an essay for it, and the submissions were amazing. I like the results so much that I decided to pick two to read instead of one. And again, I read the first one already in episode 365, where he also introduced it.
You can hear his voice and his own words in that episode. And today I'm gonna read the other essay. This one comes from George Stone Cipher, a US Army veteran who did a tour in Iraq and Afghanistan. He's a communication media broadcasting major, nice.
And we'll have to become a college football reporter or a commentator. George, you should totally look into podcasting. Anyway, I hope you can make that dream come true. If anyone listening has a connection for him, or if you connect with his essay like I did, I'll have his email address with the episode description at oldpodcast.com.
I think that's enough of an intro. So let's hear another incredible essay as we optimize your life. The 30 year old college student by George Stone Cipher. I graduated high school in 2004 and went to a small community college in central New York.
I did not do so well. After the school year ended, I moved with my family to North Carolina and spent several years at a local community college. I met my wife at this school, and during this time we found out that she was pregnant. I knew how to make a huge decision to help her and the baby.
And my way to do this was to enlist in the United States Army. So in August of 2008, I went to basic training and started the next four and a half years of our lives. I deployed twice in the first three years, once to Iraq and then to Afghanistan. Not only did I deploy twice, but I was stationed in Germany and my family came with me.
This was a new and very different thing for us. Both of our families were back here in the States, which meant other than the soldiers and their families, we only had each other to rely on. This made us very close, loving and supportive of each other. During my time in the Army and in Germany, I've experienced many things from moments of complete joy and bliss, all the way to death and some of the most terrifying, tragic, sad things that can happen to humans.
Yet I was young and full of piss and vinegar and had the mentality that nothing was gonna knock me off my high place. I felt invincible. It was not until after I came back on my first deployment that I knew there was something different about me, but I didn't know how to cope with it. It resulted in me drinking more than I did before and keeping everything bottled up.
However, at this point, it was just small stuff. Things really started to fall apart after my deployment to Afghanistan when I decided to get out of the Army. We moved back to North Carolina in 2013 and I started looking for a job without any luck. I started slipping back into depression, drinking a lot and taking sleeping pills just to fall asleep.
My wife suggested that I go back to school and it'd be something new and something that might get me out of my depression. After being out of school for seven years in 2015, I applied to Appalachian State University. It was accepted. During my first year here at App State, I took a foundation of human communications class with Dr.
Chris Patti. During this class, he mentioned mindfulness and how we could apply it to our everyday lives. It really stuck with me and made me start thinking about my own life and how being mindful might help me get back to being my normal self. The practice taught me how to really get myself to live in the moment as much as possible, but it wasn't easy.
I never really taken the time to just live in the moment and be present with what is going on around me, but I hope to get how many deal with the horrible things I'd seen and experienced, the horrible things I'd done and been forced to do, and the thoughts of all the lost fathers, husbands, brothers, sons and best friends that so often haunted me. Coping with all this really mess with my mind. I was scared and angry and worried for my wife and daughter. Initially, in order to deal with these feelings, I did what we were trained to do with soldiers and bottled up my emotions, giving focus on the mission.
This wore me out, beaten both physically and mentally. I hung out my boots, and since then, I've continued to struggle with thoughts and issues like these on a daily basis. Out of necessity, I took this being in the moment practice and decided to try it out at home to see if it would help. On a Saturday afternoon, my daughter wanted me to take her to the small river that runs behind our house so she could play in it.
I just sat on the bank of the river and watched her play. I just sat there, took a couple deep breaths in and out, got present and just sat there and watched my daughter play in the river. I was just having a blast, splashing away with our puppy. I thought to myself, this is why those soldiers sacrificed their lives.
I felt discomfort and happiness come over me. I don't know why, but I just could not stop watching my daughter saying how happy she was. I told myself, this is why what happened happened so that my daughter and others will not have to know the true horrors of war. Being present reminds me that everything is going to be alright and I need to stop dwelling on things that have happened in the past.
I have to tell myself that I did what I did so others would not have to go through what I went through. Now I apply being in the moment, every time I feel like I'm going to slip into a state of depression and it helps me realize that all is good. All is good. You just listened to the essay titled The 30-Year-Old College Student by George Stone Cipher.
It's so good. And thank you for your service, George. Again, if you want to contact George, I'll have his email available in this episode's description and he's also letting me publish this essay on oldpodcast.com. So if you want to check it out there or comment or share it, you can.
And big thanks to Dr. Chris Patti again for thinking of this awesome idea to have his students featured here on Optimal Living Daily. It was a big success and I'm happy to do it. I'll have his email address available too if you want to reach out to him for any reason.
And thank you for listening, whether you're new or an oldie that is a regular OLD listener. I really appreciate you taking time to listen. If you haven't yet, you can subscribe in the podcast app of your choice and take me along with you every day for five to 10 minutes to optimize your life with me. Have a great weekend and I'll see you tomorrow where your Optimal life awaits.
Hey, this is Dan from the Optimal Finance Daily Podcast, which is a lot like this show, except more focused on personal finance. Justin hand picks the best posts he can find from blogs and authors like Remit Safety, Mr. Money mustache and more, and I read them to you five days a week. So if you enjoy this podcast, come on over and subscribe to Optimal Finance Daily too.
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