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.

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.

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.

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.