So you might be wondering who I am if you randomly stumbled on my blog. Even if you do know me, you might not know my backstory. I am Clayton Miller, I grew up in a town of about 800 people, and its claim to fame is the fact that it has the only red light in the county. I never fit the mould of what people were like growing up there. I always had a love for electronics and computers growing up. Luckily I got to indulge myself into different things. I loved using abstract thinking for tackling how to solve problems on computer and video games. I went to college for Information Technology, never questioning what I was doing. I was on autopilot never wondering if this was the right path for me.
I worked at an auto auction in upstate new york for almost nine years. I started as a marketing intern, helping them with computer-related issues also. I then moved outside to move around cars and helping them with other tasks. I moved to do condition report writing after a couple of years, then when they had a lot management position open up, they moved me to fill that spot. Over the years, my job had really morphed into this jack of all trades position. Through the years, I picked up all these skills that did not fit into a single box. After a while, I was like there has to be more to life than this. I went searching and found Austin.
One of my big passions has been health & wellness. My earliest mentor throughout my work in fitness has been my late uncle, Scott Wilcox, who taught Taekwondo and Krav Maga. Working with him at his gym, The Edge Martial Arts in Towanda, PA, I had the opportunity to work in a variety of martial art practices, including Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, MMA, and Krav Maga. I began speaking with Jarlo IIano with GMB Fitness back in 2015. It was then that I experienced a paradigm shift in the ways I thought about fitness and nutrition. And it was through GMB Fitness that I began to know more about Onnit. Jarlo has been a mentor to many of the coaches at Onnit, and in return, he put me in contact with the former communication director for the fitness certifications.
I went to New York City shortly before I started planning this new chapter of my life, that was the match that sparked the timber which would ignite this newfound passion for life. Precisely where I wanted to set out to was yet to be determined. I knew I wanted to go explore that much more though. In the coming months, it would feel like I didn't know anything but would come to realize you do not have to have all the answers, and it is alright to ask for help. I would read stories all my life of adventures, self-discovery, love, triumphs, and finding a tribe of your own. I would get lost in the imagery that the authors would create with the lands and characters. I would imagine myself in the stories being someone completely different. I really enjoyed stories where I didn't have as much of a reference point to begin from and used the author's words to step into someone else's shoes. The feminine archetypes fascinated me even more in books, so in a sense, I was trying to vicariously live and learn about life through books because I was too afraid in fact to live and explore what my own life had to offer. I decided it was my time for an adventure, to undertake my personal hero's journey of sorts.
I thought about moving to New York City, Seattle, and a couple of other places, they have a high cost of entry, and I wanted something completely different to try. I have gone to plenty of trade shows for my hobby, Atlanta and Vegas never appealed to me. I never jived with Atlanta, and Vegas is a fun place that shows the height of humanity and ingenuity but also shows how horrible humanity can be in the same instance. New York City is a different story that's this place that I have a love, hate relationship with. It is a fascinating place that is so many different things all at once. It's a tough place to describe since it's one big walking contradiction. I also had spent time down south in North Carolina, and South Carolina. Ultimately, I let fear and resistance dictate my life, so I stayed close to home to go to college.
I had a gut feeling about Austin, TX being the place I wanted to go. It's a decent size city relativity, but it is much harder to just be lost in the crowds. It is in the south with a completely different climate people and environment wise. I looked at Austin as a whole and then talked to people from all different types of backgrounds that I have met through different things. The worst thing people would say about Austin is that its a very liberal place that is unlike the rest of Texas. People seemed to like Austin and everything it had to offer them. After just a little contemplation before I could second-guess myself, I decided that is the place for me.
I would have never thought that going to a city partly because of a gym would lead to such introspection of finding who I am. My mindset and way of thinking have changed so much. I look back at some of the first writings I did, and it seems like a different person writing that. I did not see the bigger picture of what was happening, and so it was hard to understand what I was really learning. I went in with lots of self-doubts, fear of acceptance, soft talk, fear of being vulnerable and a general disconnect of who I was and what I am capable of. I have stepped outside of my comfort zone countless times on this journey since the real growth happens in that grey area of discomfort so you can keep inching that boundary further and further.
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