Maybe You Shouldn't Kill Yourself Today

The easy way out. 

About 20 years into my career I found myself at an unfortunate crossroads. I had spent the first 10 years of my career as a computer programmer. After 10 years I decided it was the sales and marketing guys who had it made so I decided to switch over to sales and marketing. I worked my way up to the point where I was the Director of Sales and Marketing at a company called Aptek Williams but after several years for some strange reason (which is typically the case in my life) one day I just up and quit. Turns out its easier for programmers to find work than it is for folks at a director level to find work and so pretty soon I found myself broke and going through my second divorce. My wife at the time who was not working decided to take the only car we had when she left and so I had to borrow money (which I absolutely hate to do) from a friend just to buy a car. I had decided to get back into programming (my one true love) but nobody would hire me because I had not been programming for about 10 years as it was determined my skills were outdated (which in retrospect was true) and so here I was at around 40 years old, with 4 sons no money and no job. 

Now some folks cherish life to the point where they will do anything to avoid the inevitable end (like not skydiving, eating healthy, etc) but that's not me. I have had an odd fascination with death and since my early 20s (perhaps from reading too much Poe), it is really not something I fear as much as some folks do I suspect. Obviously this is a childish perspective and not something I am proud of but where I have grown as a person is in the concern for the effect it would have on those who love me. It has become apparent that my death will very much hurt my children and a small set of other individuals and so it is almost more out of concern for them that I will fight to the end, but for me alone, it is not a natural act. And so it was when back around 1997 I found myself at a point in my life where it seemed a quick bullet through the roof of my mouth would be more pleasurable then trying to recover from the debt I had accumulated and was accumulating on a daily basis. 

Eventually I found a friend in Georgia who decided to take a chance on my programming abilities and so around June of 1997 I moved what was left of my family up to Georgia and began work at a company called American Megatrends (AMI) writing device drivers for RAID controllers. It was a tough life though because the pay was low and the bills were killing me. To say I was living check to check would be euphemistic because after that year I was probably about fifty thousand dollars in debt and it wasn't getting any smaller. Suicide was a constant thought and I truly believed this had become my destiny; to struggle through my life and die poor. I was willing to do almost anything to break out of this depressing cycle and so when a co-worker told me about a technology start up (which at the time were few and far between in Georgia) I jumped at the opportunity to take a cut in pay and go to work at a 10 person company. Of course just as had been the case for most of my life even this decision seemed hexed from the start. Within two months I was told if we couldn't sell the company in the next month or so I would be let go since I was the newest employee.  

There is a saying that it is always darkest before the dawn and so I'll wrap up this narrative quickly but please keep that thought in mind. Sometime around a month later the company I was working for was acquired by Amazon.com, another start up, but quite a bit larger than ours. We were all offered a $250,000.00 sign on bonus just to report to work. Amazon relocated me, put me and my sons up in a beautiful rental house in Bellevue Washington, rented me a new Mustang and put me to work around a bunch of whiz kids who made me feel stupid. Other than feeling stupid, life was excellent. I paid off my debts, paid cash for a house near Orlando Florida, got my sons through high school and out of the house and about five years later I retired to my new house in Orlando with wife number three. So I guess the message here is that even when things are at their lowest and you are positive nothing can help, even if it seems death would be the easiest way out and best for all involved, remember, your life can turn around in an instant but you will never know that if you take the easy way out.

ADDENDUM

After reading this post it seems to convey that I am feeling sorry for myself so let me make it clear I believe we are all masters of our own destiny. I blame nobody for nothing but since that is probably logically equivalent to "I blame everybody for everything" I guess subconsciously maybe I do feel sorry for myself :-)