There's always a good way to tell a story, and a bad way to tell a story. Traditionally, the really good story tellers are those who have told the same stories over and over, occasionally adding things in, like spicing an old soup brought back to the fire for leftovers.
Sometimes I find really great stories out there. I recently read the Me and My Shadow short story on Kevin Smith's blog. Wow. A fantastic story about a lucky guy who gets his friend back from the clutches of drug abuse.
I only wish I wrote so well as to keep people from working for a full day as they poured over my words, tasting and retasting them in their minds.
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After I was fired from Medpace (which I believe had something to do with how my boss and I never saw eye to eye), I started working at a place that did blood treatment. I didn't actually touch any blood there, I just worked on the computers and network.
My boss was a really nice lady who had been there for over ten years, slowly trying to educate the powers that were into the twentieth century. (Well, twenty-first, whatever) They were convinced that fax machines were the end all be all of technology, not even comprehending the concept of paperless offices, or telecommunications in general.
So together, she and I attempted to set up a wide area network connecting all sixteen locations.
Unfortunately, it really didn't get out of the planning stage. The important people decided that this was a project they were going to become interested in, and began to nitpick every single detail.
Eventually, they came to the conclusion that my boss and I were only out to 'waste their money', and wanted 'professional advice'. So with that, they hired a consultant to come in, assess what we had, what we were planning, and give us his ideas on where to go from there. From the very beginning, this consultant was made aware that we had no plans to buy anything from him. He was just there to give his advice.
Let me just stop there for a second, because I really want to say this: When you have two employees in a department that is responsible for making sure your business doesn't fucking fail, maybe it's not the best idea to bring someone else in for their ideas.
Now, don't get me wrong, when it comes to planning, it's better to have more ideas in the mix in case you've gotten too deep in the details... But explicitly bringing someone in to debunk and dismiss your ideas because you think they're too expensive is just childish.
The guy came in, asked us about our current setup, how we did things, etc etc. It took almost a week to go over everything. There were manual procedures for just about everything, but I was working on ways of automating stuff, since they sure as hell weren't about to hire another system administrator... He took all this information somewhere else, and compiled it, ran it through best practice black boxes, and wrote out a proposal. I guess summary, but proposal was the word he used.
In his summary, he basically said that my boss and I were on the right track. We had done our homework, and we had a good grip on what to expect if our WAN plan was put into effect. He also went a step further, and mentioned how he would like to see how the department was run: it was like heaven. Basically, his idea of IT is to make things available and working for the rest of the company. If something breaks, we fix it, if something needs to be implemented, we research it and install it. For customization, the end user educates themselves on the product, and fucking customizes it themselves.
Wow.
So yeah, the VIP and her cronies didn't really like this summary. They paid the guy more than I make in a year for a week's worth of work, and he basically told them that the IT department knew their shit, and not to fuck with us.
That didn't go over so well... But a deal's a deal, and the guy left with his check and a smile.
Then my boss quit after a few more months of trying to get our ideas to fly.
Then I was stuck there, alone, with no possibility of getting anything we had planned set up. It's hard enough to support 300 people, much less trying to get a WAN setup for 16 different networks in 16 different markets...
So I basically gave up. I got really depressed, almost committed suicide, my car broke (timing belt or some shit), lost my job (all they said was that 'it wasn't working out'), apartment caught fire, got 'asked to leave' the apartment (which isn't the same as an eviction, but it still feels shitty), moved in with the in-laws, got a notice from our landlady that we owed her $6000 for her deductible for insurance, and found a job at a place where everyone seems so defeated.
Let me clarify: I started feeling depressed.
Which lead to my darkest hour.
At some point in the wee hours of the morning one day, I awoke from sleep with the express need to urinate. After taking care of business, I returned to the bedroom, but couldn't sleep. It was as if in those two and half hours I had somehow compressed time and stolen ten hours of sleep from the nether cosmos. Not to say I felt great, just really rested.
So I sat up, watched TV, stared at some websites, smoked, tried to get something to drink...
But around four in the morning, a supreme feeling of dreary sadness washed over me, and left me breathless and in a state of such self loathing that I really didn't see how I could go on. It was as if I felt supreme guilt and grief and anger all in one, but paralysed and unable to DO anything about it. The wife was totally asleep, unable to be stirred. The daughter and son were too.
So I sat. I sat in that computer chair, smoking dutifully, shaking though I was not cold, starving but I could not eat, tired but I could not sleep. All I could do was think. Think about how horrible a person I was. How the things I did weren't good enough. Things I should have done, or said, but couldn't.
I sat up all fucking night long. When you look outside before a bad storm, you see the dark clouds forming. Typically it gets really dark, then torrential downpouring rain follows, and finally resolves by the clouds drying out or blowing away. This was not the case with my storm.
The dark clouds of depression came in, got dark, and then got darker. It was as if I was surrounded by a dark glass block, and it was closing in on me. The wind never came, the dawn never broke. I was alone, and there was nothing I could do to feel better.
The weird thing was that I didn't just shut down and die. I continued to live, if you want to call it that. I got dressed and went to work. I did my job. I ate lunch, supported people on the phone, came home, ate dinner, watched tv, talked with the family, then went to bed. Granted, most nights I would stay awake for hours, faking sleep so that I wouldn't have to talk about it with the wife. After she was asleep I'd get up and smoke and cry, never able to get a grip until the morning when I'd get dressed and go to work.
It was really a blur for me. Finally I got fed up with it all and decided to either cheer the fuck up, or do something about it. In my case, the first thing to pop into my head was to drink this stuff called Fabuloso.
Fabuloso is a cleaning product made in mexico for mexicans. It's really a fantastic cleaner. We bought it from a cheapo dollar store in town. It really cuts grease and cleans windows... all for a fraction of the cost of most modern cleaners. Who knew?
Anyway, at some point in the wee hours of someday in the past, I was awake, nearly naked, smoking, trying to decide on the color of my vomit post-mortum. We had two kinds of Fabuloso, blue and purple. And I wanted to match the tile in our kitchen. Why I don't know, but suddenly the realization of what I was thinking of doing washed over me, and I knew I needed help.
So I went to my computer and attempted to contact help.
I tried looking up suicide hotline numbers. I found two. One number was out of order, and the other had some really bitchy ladies answering that night. I guess they were tired, too.
Not wanting to talk to bitches, I instead tried to fire up my IRC client and find someone who would listen to me.
My normal channel was basically dead (it was ~5am), so I searched around for somewhere to talk. A half hour later I came upon a channel centralized in southern australia, intended for people with depression.
I joined, and had an hour long talk with someone. I think we were the only two people in that channel for a long time. But we both had some pretty dark thoughts, I guess it was good to get them out, even with a stranger.
But it proved to just be temporary, for the whole next week, I would have these ... well, episodes of supreme sadness wash over me. I'd be fine one second, balled up on the floor sobbing the next.
Where I worked was a little secluded from people, my main point of contact with the outside world was my phone and computer, so when the phone rang, I'd either let it ring out to voicemail, or compose myself enough to help.
I had a problem, and couldn't really see a way out.
One day, I think it was a Saturday, I went back to the main channel I frequent, and asked if someone could please help me... a few crass snaps back and forth between myself and some other people later, and I leave, again feeling as if this was the time to finally find out how the purple Fabuloso tasted.
Then I get a call. One of the admins saw the fights and saw there was trouble, and wanted to make sure I was okay. I put the bottle of Fabuloso down and we talked for hours. He had contacted one of my friends and had him come over to cheer me up. It was all very surreal, very after-school-specially. I decided to go see my doctor that week, and he put me on a script.
My depression is something I've battled for a while. I'm not really sure what's going on, but I know that it seems to be almost seasonal, but very chemical. It tends to start in the fall, and continues on into spring. The typical things people do to get better don't seem to work for me. Chicken soup, napping, talking, etc just don't hit the spot. I've been looking for a good drug that will actually fix me, but so far nothing. This last time I tried Wellbutrin, and everything seemed to be cool until about a month after I started taking it, I broke out in hives and had some breathing problems. Since I was ramping up on it, I had to wait for all of it to flush out of my system, which took about three weeks total. It was hell. The doctors couldn't do anything to help me, all they could do was just sit and laugh.
So during all of this, I'm itching like crazy, trying to keep control over the rollercoaster that is my psyche, while still trying to maintain the stability of my job's network. Yeah.
So I break down. I ask my HR director for help, and she directs me to our employee assistance program. They hook me up with a temporary psychologist, who doesn't really do anything but listen, never really made any comments, and just gets paid.
Meanwhile, my car breaks down. I needed to do a maintenance on it for a while, something to do with the timing belt getting replaced after 60k miles... I was on 70k when the belt finally broke. Was gonna take ~$600 to replace, but I had a second car.
I took a few days off from work to try to figure out how to fix everything, and when I called in to work to tell them the next day I was coming back in, they fired me. Apparently I was doing a good job, but they thought I "just wasn't working out." Seems almost like HR lady told someone I was a crazy loon and they just wanted me out.
So I was unemployed... Got on unemployment, and started looking for work...
Two or three weeks after I lost my job I was giving my son a bath. Daughter was downstairs working on her alphabet, wife was in the other room checking email.
My daughter calls to my wife, saying she smelled smoke. Wife goes to check it out, and saw a fire in our laundry/utility room! She yelled up to me, telling me to get the hell outta the house. I run down with our son, saw the fire right next to lots of gas pipes, and immediately went into protection mode. Wrapped the son in a blanket, ushered the three of them outside, grabbed the phone, car keys, wallet, and two cats and ran outside, calling 911. Our third cat was still inside, I didn't see him through all the smoke. (most of the smoke was black from clothes that were on fire).
A few minutes after I called 911, two cops came up to the house and radioed in that it was, indeed, a fire. Two minutes after that, TWELVE fire trucks pulled into our little street, totally blocking traffic, and set to extinguishing the fire. About two hours later they have it put out and all the windows open. My wife and I were let back in where we found our third cat, still alive, hiding under our bed and between some blankets.
I'm skipping some details here, but I will hopefully go over it in more detail later.
Basically, the place was wrecked, and we couldn't sleep there. So we packed up some stuff and went to my mother in law's to live until the fire damage was repaired.
A few days later, our landlady called and told us she was going to evict us. We got a moving truck and a storage garage, and moved our stuff out. But we never got an actual eviction. Just her threatening us with it...
It was basically like everything was going horribly wrong, and I couldn't find a way to fix anything... Thankfully, I was still getting unemployment, and we went to a food pantry service to get some things to eat...
But then, the people with whom I've gamed and talked with and partied with and complained about all my troubles to... The people in the irc channel that represent a group of people who came together to game but ended up being more like a family... They all came together and donated a huge wad of cash to me. Noone else offered anything like that. I was touched, and didn't know what to say.
It's good to know people care about you, especially when you think everything is long gone and lost forever.
A few weeks after all this crazy shit, I found a job at a place that's 150+ years old. It's an old factory that makes valves, something that is used in lots of places, but people never think about.
It's a nice place and all, but the people here seem so... defeated. Like they started working here at one point, but then realized that they would never get anywhere, and would just sit and flounder about in a stagnant dance with trying to keep up with the standard of living raising, and gas prices inflating, and ... well, it's a little sad to come in every day.
Which brings me to today. After today I have the weekend off, and am going to a LAN party with the people from that gaming group I spoke of earlier. They get together every six months or so for a weekend of gaming, beers, and conversation. I've been to a few in the past, and wanted to show up with my first paycheck and buy the good beer.
I hope it lasts for a long time.
