If you haven’t yet read the earlier posts in the Bang The Gong series, I’d encourage you to start here and work your way back up to this post.
After yesterday’s shameless self-promotion, it’s time I took it down a notch.
I’d love to tell you all about how I spent nearly a decade in the computer industry and how great it was to me. Technically, those things are true. For a time, the industry was amazing. I started out working a help desk job for Concentric Network for $7 an hour. Eight years later I was making four times that as a slightly-underpaid network engineer. The computer industry put food on my family’s table for a long time, and it provided me with all sorts of opportunities for career advancement.
Unfortunately, that was only a small part of the equation. You see, by the time I was fired from my last IT job, I was clinically depressed. I was so constantly anxious that my eldest daughter didn’t even like to talk to me. She was afraid I’d start yelling at any moment. My wife was thoroughly disgusted, and nearly left me. She’s told me since then that there were several days that she started packing things for her and the children with the intention of moving out. The combination of long hours, the pressure of keeping on top of new technology and a jackass of a boss had driven me to the brink of my own sanity. There were times when I even thought about driving my truck into a telephone pole so that I wouldn’t have to go in to work.
I had hit rock bottom. When they fired me, it was almost a relief.
I say “almost,” because being jobless and looking at three months of unemployment checks before my family could no longer eat didn’t exactly bring a hell of a lot of comfort.
I shut down, almost completely. I spent many days in bed that summer, at the end of my rope. I shut out all of my friends and family. I even stopped playing D&D.
My amazing wife, who had been a stay-at-home mom since we were first married, went out, got a job and kept our family afloat. She figured out how to get the kids to school, managed all of the doctor appointments, and made dinner most nights. She did all of that while endometriosis was rotting out her insides, too. (That was a problem that would take several years and 4 surgeries to correct). I can’t tell you all how much she still impresses me, every day, with how strong a woman she really is.
I realized one cold February morning that one of the reasons I had been so unhappy was because my work was not fulfilling. With the exception of the six months or so when I’d run my own computer business in 2001, the computer industry had never provided me with any self-satisfaction. I loved the pay and liked my co-workers, but there was no feeling of accomplishment when I would fix a router in the dormitory at 3 AM so that some freshman could get to his Internet porn.
When I was a child, someone told me that I should “do what you love, no matter how much it pays.” The fact that I’d not followed that advice had finally caught up with me, and was about to destroy me.
At any rate, I figured that I needed to do something fulfilling: I decided that I needed to go back to school. I wanted to help people, to teach them. Hadn’t that been my dream so many years ago at IWU? To do that, I would need a Master’s degree. I enrolled in the Humanities program at Central Michigan University and took out as much as I could in student loans. Still, when Angie got very sick with endometriosis and couldn’t work, we needed some more income.
That’s when my Internet writing career began, and that’s where I’ll pick up next time.
10 comments ↓
Hi Bob – what an amazing story. You must have felt really depressed if crashing into a telephone poll seemed like a better option than going to work.
It must have been awful at the time though – depression is a horrible thing. It sound like you have a really supportive wife though and it’s brilliant how you managed to pull things round and finally found something you loved doing.
I wasn’t suicidal, but I was close. I was trying to think of ways to become disabled, it was that bad.
The more I think about this post, the more I realize I’ve left out one significant thing:
Anti-depressants.
I tried several through that time and none of them could control my anxiety. Some helped more than others, and when I was ready to move forward doing something fulfilling, those meds proved an invaluable support. I see my recovery as a stool with 3 legs: Angie and the girls, meaningful work, and Wellbutrin. Knock out one leg and the stool falls over.
Thanks for the candid account. My best to your family.
Thanks for sharing your story.
I worked in technical support / system admin for a little while and I can agree that it is soul-less, meaningless work. Combine it with a tool for a boss and it becomes very hard to get up out of bed in the morning and go to work.
It is a shame that sometimes it takes something like getting fired to shake us out of our work induced auto-pilot lives and find something meaninful to do, but it can be the best thing that ever happens.
Steve Mills
@ Vijayendra – Thanks for stopping in, and for your well-wishes.
@ Steve – the guy was more than a tool. He was a power tool. Having said that, I owe him my career now, in some ways.
Okay, now I love Angie even more.
Hanging on to every word and wanting to read more!
@ Amy – I know what ya mean.
@ DeafMom – Welcome, welcome! I hope I don’t disappoint!
[...] Banging My Gong – The Brand, Part 3 [...]
Bob: So glad you pulled through. Transitions are never easy. I was in a similar state of mind but I actually found the IT work (contract) fulfilling. There were other social issues, which I’ve written about elsewhere and don’t like to revisit too often.
Can’t wait to find the next part in this series.
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