Moving to a different country for a few years. Some of my closest friends are from there, who I share a shit ton of interests with.

My dad died while I was in grad school (pancreatic cancer). He was the sole breadwinner for our household - it was a real wakeup call, but I also realize in hindsight that he probably negatively impacted my personal growth. I thought, while he was around, that supporting the family business would be a viable career path, but it was mismanaged and I disagreed with decisions he would make. Instead I have had a successful career in consulting and with large corporations. There was an interim period where I did manage the business, but ended up shuttering it/liquidating. It also resulted in my siblings getting full rides to compete their undergrad. I think in our case, experiencing the bottom fall out motivated us to not miss our shot.

I do miss him, but I can’t help but think it was for the better.

J. B. Pritzker. When he was running I just viewed him as another rich guy buying is way into politics and it being 2018 I was in no mood for that and voted against him in the primary and held my nose and voted for him in the general. Did not take long to love him. So happy with the job he has done here. He jockeyed for the vp pick and was relieved he did not get it. My state has not had very good governors before him for a very long time and im concerned over who will be next.

Getting let go from a specific job. It would’ve involved quarterly travel. It didn’t seem like much at the time but in hindsight it would’ve sucked.

Followed girl to college (was madly in love and pretty dumb). Girl broke up with me. Wouldn’t have gone to a top tier grad school if not for the research I did at that college. Wouldn’t have met my wife in grad school. Wouldn’t have been able to leverage that education to get a great job. Wouldn’t have my life if not for that chick. Crazy to think about. “A butterfly flaps its wings” type shit.

2020, covid really starting to affect the company I worked for. And there was a townhall meeting where it was announced that there would be layoffs. (This was long after management had taken a pretty big pay cut to reduce cost. To be fair, they did right by us as long as they could).

I was among the last to join the company, being hired despite there technically being a hiring freeze in effect (it helps to know people), so I assumed I’d be among the first ones to go.

Shortly after the townhall I got a phone from my manager. “Shit, here comes the call” I thought to myself. Turned out that he was offering me a promotion instead.

Turned out that the guy whos position I’d been offered had been open about wanting to leave for a while, and he had chosen to do so now to save one headcount for the layoffs. But his position still needed to be filled, so they picked someone from the department that was most likely to see the most layoffs. And that was my department.

Was thrown into a pen and paper drafting class in middle school because the other popular electives were full. Hated it at first because it was just drawing block letters over and over, like it was kindergarten all over again. And then we drew isometric views of simple block shapes.

But the end of the semester, the stuff we were working on was much more intricate. I ended up taking the more advanced drafting courses in high school that taught autocad. Took some classes in college that taught solid works and eventually ended up learning 3DS Max and Maya. Also learned blender on my own. Anyway, tl:dr I hated drafting at first, thought it was a bunch of bullshit. Ended up really enjoying it, and it was my gateway into learning 3d modeling.

I decided to move out of my mother’s house. I found a place to rent, it was 1.7 miles from my job. It was just a room in a house but it was good enough. I decided to take it and called the owner.

We met at 5:00 at the panera bread after I got out of work. I signed my first ever real contract. It was my first big boy official legally binding contract.

Next day I go to work all excited and telling everyone about it. I hear there is a all employee meeting. Then all contractors get sent home early. I go to the meeting…

They announce they are closing the facility. Everyone will be let go. If we want to move to the new location we will be given priority otherwise it was nice to work with us.

Less than 24 hours after signing a legally binding contract I was going to be jobless.

Eventually I agreed to move. I have grown in my career. I live with my girlfriend who I met her. I still work with the same company.

Overall it’s a improvement over my previous experience and it was 9 years ago…

I was working for a big company, middle upper level technical position.One of my ex co-workers went to work for Disney. He hooked me up with an interview. They flew me in, rented me a car.

They brought me in to the interview. I sat around for about an hour and a half before they were ready. They came in and grilled me on uncommon proprietary Linux management packages. At the time I was managing a couple of 10,000 node clusters, had been running them for years. Of the four guys in the interview three of them just dismissed me. After the interview I headed out, wasn’t really mad but I was pretty disappointed the fourth guy pulled me aside and said I think they were being extremely unfair to you in there if you are really interested in trying to work your way in here reach out to me and I can advocate for you.

After the interview I farted around LA for a couple of hours and then flew home.

After some reflection I realized I really didn’t want to work with those other three guys. I never reached back out.

4 months later Disney dissolved that department.

Keyboarding class. I actually thought they were teaching how to play the keyboard. Oh boy was I disappointed. But yeah, now I can type ungodly fast.

I got pulled over and the cop found a 1/2 gram of pot in my car (a very small amount), which ended up with me having to do community service and take regular drug tests. I was working as a line cook at the time, but being forced to stop smoking weed gave me the push to finally apply for an entry level manufacturing position at a local company who does drug tests. Years later I still work there, but as a software engineer, and attending online college. I wouldn’t quite say I’m grateful about the ass backwards drug laws and invasive drug screening, but I really can’t argue that my current situation is a lot better than it was back then. Without that event, I might still be working random entry level jobs.

Last year my yearly medical checkup results indicated that I have a tumor. After a couple of months of stressing and additional tests, it ended up as being a false alarm. This was one of the best things that happened to me in a long time, it gave me a good kick in the ass to start working on myself and my mental health. I started seeing a counsellor, started to travel abroad for vacation twice per year, stopped stressing so much amout my job, etc…

My niece and nephew ended up in the system and I felt morally obligated to put my life on pause and help my parents get them adopted and taking care of them. I couldn’t even move back into the house as each child required their own room so for the past year I’ve been living in a tent in their back yard. The whole ordeal has been emotionally taxing, but also kind of rewarding in weird ways I didn’t expect.

In terms of the kids, its nice to be able to positively influence their lives and show them the kindness, love, and guidance I wish I had. When I make them laugh or they express gratitude It makes me feel like my existence wasn’t a complete waste.

In terms of living in a tent? I came to love it. It taught me to overcome many issues and made me much more resiliant. To better understand the difference between convinence and necessity. Most of the things you think you need, you really don’t.

From the basic survival stuff like adjusting to the climate, to building my own solar system, to learning how to clean myself and use the bathroom without running water. I minimized my entire lifestyle, let go of all the useless trinkets I thought I needed, and found the true basics of what a person really needs to be comfortable.

I also learned how to confront my fears of what other people think of me for daring to live an alternative lifestyle in their view.

I feel so mentally different from the person I was a year ago. More capable and confident. I feel like I can do anything, be anyone, go anywhere. I feel kind of great about myself and my situation in life. I feel like I’m an okay person living a genuine authentic life. Helping out my family while getting myself figured out.

Also given the current housing and renting market, I can’t help but feel like I’ve figured out a cheat code. "Affordable housing? That converted out car looks good enough to me. "

I dont think things would have gone this way had the kids not ended up in the system.