30 Days until graduation...High Hopes got me here!

Okay, as promised, here is the first installment of my final 30 days until I graduate.
It's 5:45. I've been up since 4:30AM. I have been getting up early all my life because I was always a paperboy, or I was going hunting or fishing. The truth is I really like being an early riser. Something about an early start that makes me feel like I'm getting more done. But 4:30 is really early...especially every single day without a break since February. But I have to do this. I have a mandatory Algebra class I am taking and it's very hard for me. I am learning it as I go and it takes me 3 times as long as any of my other classes. I spend an hour to an hour and a half per day on each of my other classes. Right now those classes are Bibl450 which is a class on Daniel and Revelation together, and Lifc301 which is a Health and Wellness class for my life coaching program. Earlier this semester I had Life Coaching 201 (a basic Life Coaching course) and Bibl364 (The Book of Acts). Online semesters at LU are 17 weeks long but they are divided into three sub semesters lasting eight weeks each. (One sub semester overlaps the first and the second, but few people take courses in those)  Plus there are some classes that run all 17 weeks...like this algebra class. My other courses are eight week classes so I had the first two from Jan 17 until March 12 and this set runs from March 21 until May 11. It's a great system as long as you keep up. If you are a resident student the same material takes 17 weeks to cover, so online you are covering the material in huge chunks. If you fall behind even one week you really run the risk of failing. With the additional study time I've needed for math, this has been a hard semester. I've been sleep deprived and stressed to the point of my vertigo returning. I had shingles about two months ago. Both of these are stress related. I am so pressed for time that I stopped going to the gym, which makes me feel even worse. Starting tomorrow I am going back. I am close enough to being caught up in math now, that I can spare the 2 hours in the morning.
In all this, I am still happier than I have ever been. Getting this degree means the world to me. It's been the first good thing that happened to me in the five years since I lost my home to foreclosure and the 4 years since I first became homeless and was sleeping in my car and showering at the gym. It's been a hard road and my degree completion has been the only thing that I've tried that worked consistently throughout the last few years. Liberty University online probably saved my life in a lot of ways. At very least it saved my belief in myself and my tattered self esteem.
I started at Liberty in 1984. I had been out of High School for three years and each fall as my friends left for college I would be severely broken hearted. All I wanted was to go to school and become who and what I felt I was supposed to be. I could spend pages writing about why that didn't happen right away but suffice it to say that I didn't grow up in a home where education was valued or respected. I was told that a good factory job was what I should pursue and I should be thankful for whatever I got. That's partially true, but it's also mind-numbingly sad. I was a brilliant student in high school. I scored a 29 on the ACT. (The highest score possible is 32) My English aptitude was off the charts. My advisor at Liberty my freshman year said that with scores like mine I could have gotten scholarships galore had I applied right after high school and that I could CLEP up to a Junior level in English right away.
I got one year at LU in 84-85 and another in 94-95. Then I got married. Then a year and a half later I became a dad. Then I became a mortgage banker. Then a homeowner, then a divorcee. In 2007 I lost my home when the industry collapsed and in 2008 the career I had grown into and had tremendous success in was gone. I had been a national award winner. A Branch-of-the-Year nominee for the largest privately funded mortgage company in the world. I had earned six figures.
By May of 2008 I was living in my car.
August 9, 2009 I was sitting in that same car, in the parking lot of Panera Bread Company and I had just hung up with my advisor at LU online. I had an old envelope in my hands and I was reading the words scrawled on the back. "Bibl110, CRST290 History of Life, HIUS221, THEO202." This was my class schedule for Fall 2009. I was back in LU and once again pursuing my dream of graduating from there. In the midst of my homelessness and desperation I had something to look to and work towards. I cried in my car for about 15 minutes. I had forgotten how much this meant to me and how badly it hurt that I'd never completed this journey.
For the next three years...six semesters online, five of them completed while living in my car...I pursued this goal. It was the one thing that I could look at and say "At least this isn't failing. This is working out". I dropped a lot of classes and attempted them more than once. It's not that any of them were especially hard...it's just so hard to do your best when you are limited by where you are living and you can only study at a restaurant or the library or FedEx office...or by flashlight in the front seat of your car.
But I did it. 30 days from today I will wear that cap and gown and walk across the stage on Liberty Mountain and receive the degree I have chased for literally more than half my life.
But today I have to get back to studying and then go paint a deck, and draw some plans for another deck and pressure wash yet another before I return home this evening and study a whole lot more.
Typically I am up until midnight. 4 1/2 hours of sleep each night is not much...even for a guy like me who has been sleep-avoiding most of my life. But in 30 days I can relax a bit. So today I'll press on.
See you all tomorrow...

Happy Birthday HK!

Happy Birthday Harry Kalas! The greatest of the Great. We love you and miss your presence. Enjoy heaven...see you soon!

Almost there...

Today I start my final semester of undergrad studies at Liberty University Online. I can hardly believe it's here. I still remember sitting in my car on a blistering hot August afternoon in 2009, looking at the back of an envelope with tears streaming down my face. Scrawled on that paper were five classes, Theology 202, Creation Studies, American History, Gospel of John, New Testament Survey 202. It turns out this was my launch code.
Through three and a half years of embarrassing, lonely, heartbreaking homelessness, my ongoing education kept me sane. It provided me with one good thing I could point to and say "See...something I am trying is working. I'm not a total failure"
It took 6 semesters to finish my degree. Of those 6 semesters I was homeless for 5. I studied by dashboard light, or in FedEx office or the library or restaurant. I kept my belongings in a self storage shed and swapped out my books as each semester ended and a new one began. I was studying in my car but in my heart I was a student on Liberty Mountain and I was not going to wait another ten years this time. There were times I thought I'd not make it. In a more perfect world I could have graduated last spring  but my world hasn't been perfect for a while now. I'm glad. I'm glad the road was rough and hard and difficult and I'm glad I had to overcome bigger obstacles than many others to get this degree. I'm glad because it showed me that I am still an over-comer. I am no longer defined by the collapse of the mortgage industry...as of this morning I am 8 weeks from being Robert Craig Daliessio, Class of 2012, B.A. Religion, Liberty University.
"A man is not measured by what it takes to knock him down...but by what it takes to keep him down" --Dr. Jerry Falwell

If I can do this, you can do this. Once you dream a dream, you must never,ever,ever quit!
High Hopes everyone!
Craig

New Venture for Craig and HKSML!! Motivational Speaking, Life Coaching and more!

Hey everyone!

Big news for fans of HKSML and anyone who has been inspired by Craig's amazing story!

We are proud to announce the beginning of a brand new venture "The Little Old Ant Group".

LOA is Craig's new umbrella group that includes his Motivational Speaking, Life Coaching, and Radio Show endeavors. The web site will be up and running in a few days. In the mean time, please send all speaking / Life Coaching requests to LittleOldAnt25@gmail.com 

                                                             Why "Little Old Ant"?

Well the answer is simple...Harry Kalas' favorite song was "High Hopes". The main character was a "Little Old Ant" who refused to listen to the naysayers who said he couldn't knock down a rubber tree that was stubbornly in his way. The ant was resilient and more stubborn than the rubber tree...and before you know it, the tree was just a stump. Craig's story is a personification of this classic Sinatra song. A lot of hard hits knocked him down...but nothing could keep him down! Not a painful divorce, not the loss of his career in the mortgage industry, not 3 1/2 years of homelessness could make him quit. Nothing could keep him from being his daughter's daddy and bouncing back to a better life than the one he had before! From a highly successful career in the Mortgage industry earning 6 figures, to homelessness. From despair and isolation to authoring 4 books, 4 blogs and graduating college at 48.

Craig completed 6 semesters of college through Liberty University Online to finish his Bachelors and graduate this May. This is impressive enough but add to it the fact that he was homeless for 5 of those 6 months and it's nothing less than amazing. It's that "Little Old Ant" in real life...leaving a forest of rubber tree stumps!

Craig's story inspires, motivates, instructs, challenges and leaves every listener a little better than they were before. You'll laugh a little...cry a little...and most of all you'll never look at your own challenges the same. As Craig says, "Every painful situation is a chance...a chance to prove that you're better than your problems...that you can come through whatever you face with a new perspective...and that you can inspire others just by being who you are and who God intended you to be." 

Nobody who reads "Harry Kalas Saved My Life" looks at life in quite the same way. And nobody who hears Craig tell his story firsthand ever looks at challenges the same either. What life throws at you to knock you down and derail your dreams are really just training grounds for the strength it takes to be a success. Remember...

            "They aren't problems...they're rubber trees who haven't met their Little Old Ant yet!"

                                                                               ---Craig Daliessio

High Hopes 2102...

Hey Gang!!
In just a few days I'll be announcing some NEW and EXCITING things coming up here for HKSML and for Me! I can hardly wait! In the meantime...keep your hopes high!!

2012 is our year!!

Hey gang! For the Phillies and for all of us with High Hopes and a spirit that just won't quit...this is going to be a GREAT year! Stay tuned!!

The Highest Hopes

It's the final day of September, 2011. Tomorrow the playoffs begin for us. Going into this postseason is different this year than any other year in my life as a sports fan.
This is easily the greatest Phillies team ever assembled and maybe one of the greatest teams in the history of the game. And they play for my hometown. I can't begin to tell you how that makes me feel. Philadelphians are frequently maligned and some of that is well deserved. But the fact is, there isn't a more loyal, emotional or knowledgeable fan base anywhere on earth. People say all the time; "We live and die with our teams" but in Philly it's true. Living in Nashville for 14 years, I have seen what a front running fan base looks like. The Titans can pack their stadium...as long as the team is 11-5 and making a playoff run. But in Philly...we will pack the house even when our teams are losing badly. Because they are our teams. They are us. Those guys go out there every night in Phillies pinstripes, or Eagles midnight green, or the red white and blue of the Sixers, or that special Burnt Sienna and Black of the Flyers. But under the uniforms, they are us. They represent my town...no matter where I am at the time. We hitch our blue-collar dreams to those guys every time they take the field. We need them as much as they need us.
This year has been magical for Phillies fans. We never relinquished the lead in the East. We ran up a club record 102 victories. We assembled the greatest pitching staff in team history and perhaps the greatest of all time. This from a franchise that only 4 years ago was the butt-end of jokes about losing 10,000 games. Anyone remember that? Anyone? Didn't think so.
There is a tremendous lesson here. Success will make people forget failure. It's easy as that. We used to bristle at the mere mention of 10,000 losses...now we look at it as a badge of honor. Yes...my team was the first team to reach that number. How do you like us now? How do you like a team that was so special that Cliff Lee turned down substantially more money from NY to come play for us? Is there a way to turn that into a joke or are you going to have to simply deal with it? The Phillies are a shining example to the greatest life lesson of all...you are not the sum total of your failures.
I love this team. And I will always love my hometown. I am a Philly boy. That's just how it is. And tomorrow, my team begins it's pursuit of a third World Series appearance in four years and a second World Championship in that same span. This team could not be in a better place at a better time.
Things have been rough for a lot of people for a long time. We look to sports to get our minds off of the way things are. For me...that became life changing on October 29th 2008, when this team won it's most recent World Series. As the Phillies have improved, so has my situation improved. My own 10,000 losses have given way to small, but increasing successes. In May I will graduate from Liberty University...28 years after first arriving there as a freshman. It's been a long difficult road in the years between. My 10,000 losses were costly and painful. But, standing on the threshold of achieving a dream I have held for half of my life...I barely think of those losses anymore. I am feeling like a winner again. And when I feel down, or feel like I am overwhelmed by the things that want to rip victory from my hands and take back every inch I so gamely fought for...I can look at my Phillies and their red-pinstriped suits of armor...and see the model for staying after it until the victory is won.
I was homeless and sleeping in my car when this team won their 2008 World Series. I am one semester removed from being a college Graduate as we head into this postseason. I was desperate and lost and beaten and defeated when Brad Lidge struck out that last batter. I am working in a job I enjoy, planning for a bright future and thinking about graduate school as the 2011 version of the Phillies takes the field in search of another championship.
The last time I heard Harry Kalas' wonderful voice I was wrapped in a sleeping bag, cramped in a Volvo 850 hidden in tall weeds behind a church in Nashville. I wept openly as I heard him make the last call.
The next time I hear his voice...there will only be tears of joy.
Thanks Harry...let go Phillies!
High Hopes!