There are half a dozen or more ways why this is so significant to me. This is where I started to form have a good work ethic. It all started when I was 6 years old and one night my dad asked if I wanted to go work on a job the next morning and I said yes. Thus beginning my 10 plus years of working in the snow, rain, fog, cloudy and sunny days. But I am only talk about the last 3 or 4 years of working.  That was when I started to become the main worker and work started to work harder.
We are going to start 4 years ago in 2015. Which was a hot and muggy summer and it wasn’t fun to work outside, and I was complaining a lot but my dad told me to push through it and I did,( giving that I felt like crap at the end of the day and could barely walk straight). Then that winter dad was doing a land clearing job south of home a few miles and we had our old john deere 2020. And that thing has seen better day. Anyways I had to sit on the tractor and turn the wheel to get the hydraulic oil warmed up and moving. But the down side was there was a wind and I had to short of pants at the time and my ankles were getting cold and it hurt, but I worked through it. Unlike the other tree businesses that don’t work during the winter, we work year round, no matter the weather or temperature.
Now let’s go ahead to 2016. It was normal spring, snow gone by April, mud gone by mid April. Even the work was normal, but we had lots of work to do and worked almost every evening and every saturday all day long. So we did lots of tree trimming and removal/ stump grinding. Out of the whole summer I only got 3 or 4 weeks of vacation to go and have fun with friends all day. And I knew that I had to work hard to play harder. 
So go forward to 2017 and it was a bit warmer than usual, there was one day were dad and I went to the lake after working to cool off and have fun. That I think was the hottest day of the whole summer. The humidity did help with the weather.  But that helped build my work ethic even more. Then I joined cross country and I wasn’t working hard enough, I was complaining that my feet hurt, walk about 1/4 of the distance we were told to run, and didn’t pushing myself the first half of the season. But then one meet something changed and I started to push myself and I ran a pretty good 5k time and got on varsity. So every meet after that I pushed myself even harder almost to my max. The sections came around, it was cold and windy. The wind was raw and I didn’t do so good at that meet, then later I figured out why I didn’t run my best at the meet. So now I don’t bring chocolate chip cookies to any meet with me.
So now we are into 2018 track and even more work. I started my season pushing myself. And it helped my to run a fast mile time at the first meet, then I started to run the two mile and that was a lot of fun. There was one other runner from cannon. And it wasn’t Watson, sadly. But it was another senior, Charlie Outterness. We both had fun running it together. And we push each other to do better each meet, even though we had like only 5 or 6 meets. But on my last meet of the season I ran my fastest mile and won the two mile, with charlie just behind me.
I don’t only work, but I get paid to do the work and have fun while doing the work with my dad and sometimes my brother and another worker we use every now and then. So while other people think to tree work in 75-80 degree weather would suck, it did at first but I got use to it and learned to have good endurance and to work hard, take big loads, have fun, and don’t complain. Sometimes I wish that I didn’t have to work, then I remember without the tree business, we wouldn’t be able to stay at all the hotels we stay at, go boating, eat out, and just have fun in general. So let me ask you one question. What do you do when the going gets tough, do you be tough and get going, or do you just turn around and run away and don’t face your fears? And to finish this off, because of my dad, and GOD I have a work ethic that make me work hard and be very competitive. And I try to make the work fun to make it go faster and make it a little bit more enjoyable.