Finding Matthew

When I moved to Pittsburgh I had grand intentions of going to work in the suburbs, getting my PA EMS teaching certification, going back to school and living the city life. While I have gone to work in the suburbs, I have also spent most of my time outside of the city and well, I haven’t been teaching and I haven’t gone back to school. What I have done, though, is accomplish what I truly set out to do, and that is to prove to myself that I could move back here and make it. I have been here for eight months and in that time I have learned that I am a country boy, not a city boy. I have discovered what is most important to me and that is the love of my family and friends and that I do not like being hundreds of miles away from them.

Since moving from Maine to the city I have exercised my Second Amendment rights, I have gone off-roading for the first time- as my sister puts it, I’m doing things backwards, most people move to the country to do those things. But in doing these things and exploring a new region and learning what I have learned about myself I can now say that for the first time ever I actually feel like an adult. My mindset for the past few years has been as though I were trapped in my early 20s while here I am just six months away from my 30th birthday.

For a long time I have believed that love is never lost and time is never wasted so long as you learn something about yourself in the process. It is this philosophy that has allowed me to live a life without regret. Surely there are things I would have done different, but I don’t regret the choices I have made because they have caused me to grow as a person. So while I may not have gone back to school and I may not have started teaching EMS here in Pennsylvania and I haven’t exactly been living the city life, I have accomplished something greater, something that I truly needed to do without even realizing it- I have found myself.