Life is hard

I’ve struggled with middle-class white male problems for a while. The most difficult for me has always been this sense of having potential, but completely wasting it. I am chemically composed of 83% regret. (That means all the water in my body has been replaced by regret and then another 20ish percent. It’s not good. I am dehydrated.)

With this in mind (and being 30 and married without a career of any kind or any marketable personal interests or hobbies), I came to Turing get a kickstart (or kick re-start?) on life. Particularly regarding career and the ability to support a family. So Turing, and my success here, is of great importance to me and my wife: our future, financially, is riding on it. This urgency is increased when considering the fact that we only have enough money to pay for Turing and last 7 months. Repeating is not really an option for us financially.

So yeah, there’s a bit of pressure to succeed unlike any I’ve had in the past. It’s a good thing (mostly).

Death is harder

As you may be able to tell from the headline, there was a death in the family recently. In the middle of week 5, my wife’s father was rushed to the hospital with severe internal hemorrhaging, admitted to the ICU and then passed away all within 2 days. This was unexpected and a shock to everyone involved. He was only 52.

My wife was very close to her father. When we left San Diego to come out here, she was exceptionally emotional about leaving behind everything and everyone she had ever known, but most especially her family. She is possibly the most emotionally sensitive and empathetic person I know (which is an odd pair because sometimes you may doubt that I even have emotions). She had been having some pretty severe emotional struggles lately, but then this happened.

As hopefully everyone will agree (even the heartless such as myself), family and emergencies like this take precedence. It doesn’t matter what else we’re talking about, this takes precedence. So, in the middle of Little-Shop and the final push to finish the module, I flew back to San Diego without any notice or any plan for when I’d return. (This is great for strengthening distributed Git workflow, not great for missing check-ins and instructor feedback.) I spent the time alternating between assisting with practical tasks, like arranging for ceremonies, and just holding my wife as she sobbed uncontrollably. Death is hard.

I don’t really have a point to all of this. I suppose I am just “venting” my thoughts from the last few whirlwind weeks. It has been tough, but we will recover and we must, because although it hurts and is difficult, those same pressures that brought me to Turing in the first place still remain and life goes on.