Jared Pugh
Elliot Coyle
English 130W
February 5th, 2020
Life is an interesting thing, it has so many factors that shape are everyday lives. Each home, each new meeting, each friend, each relationship, and even every pet we’ve had influence who we are to this day and age. Every person has a story, and before the end of each story there is a beginning and a middle. Everyone’s middle is different no matter how similar, that goes for Jared Pugh as well.
I was born in Seattle on April 30th, 2000, on a rainy day like any other day in Seattle. From there, I lived in a small town right next to Seattle called Edmunds for the first seven years of my life. Those years were the simplest of my life, my biggest concern being my extremely annoying big sister. For the first five years, we lived in a modest home that wasn’t too big nor too small, then we moved to a much bigger house for the next two years of our time in the state of Washington. The time in that house was fun, plenty of space to explore and play. Then my mother somehow forced the entire family to move to California, where we would live in too different houses for the next 12 years.
The first house we moved into was located in a small town near Sacramento called El Dorado Hills, a small community that was hot as hell compared to our previous northern homes. I personally believe the seven years spent in Washington and the three years spent in El Dorado Hills is why I am so adapted to both hot and cold weather. This move was… difficult but since I was so young I got used to it quicker than everyone else. Family tensions were high, as is normal with any family when you force a troubled teenage girl to leave her entire life behind to move across multiple states just so her mother can be happy about their living arrangements. For the next three years I learned how to adapt to the heat and how Californians acted compared to the northern folk. I made good friends while I was there, but eventually after the third grade it was decided to move even further south to the coast. Ever since then, I’ve lived in an extremely small town along highway one called Moss Beach.
Moss Beach was technically a part of the beach town called Half Moon Bay, irrelevant since I still had to get small town customs plus beach town customs. People there were more relaxed and eccentric than any other area I lived in before then. I spent nine years in that area, and those were the most important years of my life. Those were perhaps the most influential years of my life considering those were the years that basically set the foundation of any persons personality. I learned how to have fun, how to learn from my mistakes, and how easy it is to bring joy to people. The previous years taught me how to adapt and survive, but Half Moon Bay taught me how to enjoy my life.
Nineteen years of life and what have I learned from the several environments I’ve lived in. I’ve learned nature is harsh but beautiful, how the temperature of the outside is honestly pathetic until you get past your prime, and that for every hardship there is something fun that can be done in response. My environments taught me how to survive and they taught me how to live. No matter what people say, survival does not mean you are living your life unless you are surviving with a smile on your face.
