>>194911
It hasn't always been an easy ride anon.
This is the one time I'm ever gonna let myself blogpost, and I promise to never do it again. But if it inspires anybody to fix their life up I'll take the flaming.
When I was little I was homeschooled from the age of 5 to 7, and was a legit child prodigy. Learned to fly aircraft when I was 8, learned to drive and all manner of outdoor survival skills at 9. When I started school they wanted to put me in 6th grade because I could already read, write, and do math at a highschool level, but my parents wanted me to "socialize with kids my own age" so second grade it was. My dad shelled out for a private school for my first two years and it was pretty good, insofar as I remember it. When I was in third grade my teacher entered me into a highschool math contest as a lark and a I took third place, honorable mention. My parents divorced when I was 10 and it tore me up bad for most of my adolescence. The years in public school that came after were literally Hell on Earth as I was way too smart and way too well spoken and polite, and had no concept of what sarcasm was. I was the nicest "nice kid" you could ever imagine, and the biggest dupe. I was bullied endlessly, and trying to talk about it got me verbally abused at home.
By the time I hit high school I had found vidya as a form of relief and spent every waking hour outside of school buried in RPGs and first person shooters. I made two really good friends but didn't go to the same school as either one, and I ate alone in the cafeteria every day. The teachers all loved me except for two (math teacher/gym coach and fat cow English teacher who everyone knew were fucking on the side) and the students mostly hated me/were terrified of me. And by that time I had learned to hate them back. After Columbine there was no shortage of "voted most likely to shoot up the school" jokes, and I was
not a nice kid anymore. My sophomore year I got a home computer and discovered dial-up Internet. Not knowing what the hell to do with this new technology that was basically a fancy typewriter, I took a computer class at school in the second semester and learned to type and use Visual Basic 3.0 and I was hooked. By the time I was a senior my typical school day consisted of sleeping through class until lunch, eating and playing videogames in the library, then going to metal shop, chemistry, and physics where I put in actual effort. Then I'd go home and play videogames until 10-11pm and then go online (less risk of phonecalls late at night) and work on my hacking skills until 5 or 6am. I became the schools unofficial "tech support kid" for anything computer related, and actually got in trouble once for dumping their Novell Netware password database for the lulz. I met a girl my senior year and fell for her hard, and she broke my heart a year and a half later. I also lifted weights extensively and got completely fucking ripped around that time. I could do Goku pushups, in a handstand with my feet against the wall.
College wasn't notable other than the fact that I double majored in STEM fields and had a hard time passing grades because my time in public school had sapped my will to
live/ study anything and doing homework was agonizing. For the first time I really struggled, and got put on academic probation once. I pushed through both fields for 6 years, and the year of my graduation my old man suddenly died. His final expenses sapped what money we had left and saddled me with around $55,000 in long term debt. When you die, Medicare pays 80% of your final medical bills and expenses. 20% of
several hundred thousand dollars worth of expensive surgeries and ICU care is still a big number, even after bill mercy and sliding scale. Then there was the funeral. Being his only kid, everything fell on me. I also inherited his house, which was stuck with a mortage that cost far more than the property was worth, but it gave me a place to live. So instead of attending graduation day with the rest of my class I filed for my transcript and was almost penniless and out looking for a job, living off a credit card.
When job hunting I made up my mind and committed myself to one thing: No matter what, I was not going to work in big box retail or fast food. Both seemed like dead end, suicide jobs. I drove around looking for a smaller business that did something interesting. Something I could be motivated to stick with. I found a small company that sold military equipment (I was a gear queer, but didn't own any) and went in and asked to meet with the owner. I told him my story, he told me about his company, and I offered to work for him. We shook hands and the next day he called me up and hired me formally. I started as a part time register monkey, and got moved to full time after 60 days. Dealing with people all day every day
forced me to peel off my armored shell and engage with folks. 5 or 6 months later I was promoted to Shipping, and then Shipping Manager a couple months after that. The following year they moved me to corporate where I had my own little office, doing vendor negotiations and digital catalog work with the IT guys. I drove a (used) Mustang and wore a suit, and had a fancy watch and a cute girl. And I was
dying. Sitting in a desk chair, either at home or work, for ~16 hours a day caused me to first balloon up to 300lbs and then to develop blood clots. When I got emergency treatment for those they broke apart and caused a series of mini-strokes that fucked up my speech for a while and permanently fucked up my ability to type. Even now I hunt and peck at about 45WPM, and this all happened over two decades ago. These issues caused me trouble at my nice job so I began looking for one that would keep me on my feet and active more. I met a friend who was starting a gun shop who offered to bring me on, so I quit my office job and went to work for him.
I gradually made a recovery from my speech impediment and got so I could type and use computers and do most of the old stuff that I had been able to do. I got back into Internet culture after my recovery and spent time on forums and early 4chan, especially /k/ because I was a gunfag now. Then I got an injury while working on my truck that wound up causing blood poisoning, and I very nearly died. I wound up in the ICU myself for 7 hours, and this was right after I lost my health insurance to Obamacare, so it completely bankrupted me. I had to sell off almost everything I owned, including my entire (formerly impressive) gun collection. I lost all my savings and went into debt again and had to dig my way back out from nothing. Again. That was the situation all the way into 2014 when #GG started and I met all of you, and you mostly know my story from there. Here I am, 8 years later, once again debt free, healthy, and doing what I love.
The moral of the story is,
letting the world beat you is a choice. You can't stop every ass-kicking that life is going to hand you, but you don't have to take them lying down. You only EVER lose when you give up. Even if you get smashed flat all the way to the bottom of the mountain, you are still
guaranteed to reach the peak if you put in the willpower and time. If a man has the willpower to persevere forever, he can move the whole Earth with a spoon. And my family's motto from old Germania was "Perseverat et Vinci." Persevere and Conquer.
Edited last time by Acidadmin on 07/12/2022 (Tue) 00:43:23.