The thread posted by LarsV8 about his job situation had me comment on how I quit a job I had for 10 years and led to two of the worst years of my life (2011 and 2012). I won't bore you with the same post that I had in the other thread but it got me wondering - what were the worst years of your life? I am going to go with 2011 and 2012 as the absolute worst but I also had these years: 1991 - graduated high school (which was good of course) but hated the college I went to in the fall (after the first month) and couldn't wait for Christmas Break so I could transfer out of there. 1996 - made a C in my first graduate math course in grad school and also missed my girlfriend as we had broken up over the summer - this C would eventually lead to me not being able to get my master's in math. 1999 - had a big falling out with my supervisor at the bank and wound up quitting to take a teaching job that was absolutely disastrous - spent the last 2 months of the year without a job and had awful nightmares. The years 2000 through 2006 were probably some of the best years I had but I was lonely and wanted to be able to start a family pretty badly. 2006 - met my wife and we got married at the end of May - the transition from single life to married life was really tough on this long-term bachelor. I had already talked about 2011 and 2012 - the years 2013 through 2020 were okay although they had their difficulties from time to time - primarily having to move back in with my parents and not seeing my son every day. Also, having to work in a call center for about 3 years wasn't any fun either. 2021 and 2022 - Thanks to COVID-19 Pandemic, enrollment numbers at the CC I teach have gone down - starting this past January, I lost the extra classes I have been used to getting which has caused a loss of income. We have been able, fortunately, to get by but we have to watch every penny we spend. Add on to the fact that the wife is unhappy with her job (hopefully she gets her transfer she wants starting this fall) and the fact that everything has gone up in price (gas, groceries, etc) - these 2 years have gotten to be pretty bad. But they still can't top 2011 and 2012.
The worst year was probably 2019, but it was really just the first 4 months of 2019. That's when my then-newborn daughter started to feel the effects of a birth defect with one of her organs. We went to the ER and/or urgent care multiple times a week, with some weeklong stays in the hospital. I think I aged 10 years over those few months. If there is a worse feeling than seeing your small infant child in severe pain and knowing you can't do anything about it, well, I don't think I could survive that. She would get better, then immediately get worse, then better, then worse, and on and on. Even when she wasn't in pain she was on heavy medications, and you were always unsure of what would happen in the next second. Fortunately once she reached 6 months old in April she was able to get the surgery she needed, and it's been all good since then. I've had less than great years but nothing compares to those 3+ months. But overall, I feel extremely lucky. 3 healthy and happy kids, live in a decent place, wife and I have good-ish jobs.
This sounds more miserable in the actual movie when he says it. It's why it is my favorite movie of all time... ok, maaaybe the Lord of the Rings Trilogy or Shawshank Redemption may be better, but it's close.
Manny thanks for making this thread. It's sometimes hard to look back at what were tough times in our lives but I think it really helps make us who we are. With St. Patrick's Day 2022 I've been thinking a lot about how Irish culture is a lot about suffering and all of the joy of Irish culture is colored by loss. I think being human is that you can't really know joy unless you know pain also.. For me the most difficult year of my life was when I was 24. I had been out of college for a year and decided I wanted to move to Boston because I thought it would get me a better chance to get into MIT. I didn't really know many people there and a lot of things went wrong there including problems with work and relationships. I ended up spending much of that year unemployed, very poor, loveless and friendless. Didn't even get into MIT. It was also the first time I had lived in a cold climate and had a very hard time adjusting to the climate. Things got so bad that one night I seriously thought about just throwing myself into the Charles River and letting the icy water take me away. What kept me from doing that was the understanding that while I was personally in pain there was more to existence than just me. That there was the World and I was part of that World even though it was painful. In Buddhism there is the concept of Samsara that says that existence is to know suffering. So just being alive and in pain isn't something that was only unique to myself but meant that I was human. So while that year was very hard without that experience and understanding I don't think I could've handled the other hard years that have come since. I don't think without that I could've made it through the last few years where I've personally lost some people close to me. Had to deal with that grief unable to do the things that have previously sustained my spirit, doing martial arts and playing live music. And in the middle of all of that dealing with a period of intense fear and uncertainty as much of my neighborhood was looted and burned following the death of George Floyd.
Rocketsjudoka and everyone else who have posted: Thanks for your posts, I know it is not easy sometimes to go back and revisit things that brought us pain but I do believe that it can help us going forward on trying to achieve that right path. It's hard to believe that I have been on this site for over 20 years. The old-timers will remember how I used to post a lot and my various threads (I used to do other threads besides music!) and they will probably tell you about how lonely I was. I have shared a lot of my personal life on this site and it has burned me in the past but that's the risk you take. For a long time, I was very shy and awkward around girls - I dated some in high school but once I got to college, I found it too intimidating for some reason. By the time I got out of school and started working, I realized that some of the best opportunities to meet girls slipped through my fingers. Now I was in my late 20s and afraid that I would become a life-long bachelor. In 2006, I met my future wife on a blind date and we fell head over heels in love. But we had a lot of problems and the biggest was that we really didn't know each other as people. We had chemistry but it was a physical one and when I lost my job in 2011, our relationship was still one that hadn't progressed to a deeper level. The funny thing is that we became closer and better friends once we were apart! It was extremely hard for me to end our marriage because that meant not seeing my son on an everyday basis. It also meant that I would lose the closeness that I had with my stepdaughter. In February of 2020, right before the pandemic hit, my wife (still my ex) at the time had a heart to heart talk with me and let me know that she always still loved me. Seeing that my son was now 11 and no longer 2, I felt that if we could somehow make it work, then we should try to reunite our family. I could, theoretically, remarry her and not be in love with her and only be there for our son, but I just could not bring myself to do that. It didn't take long for me to realize that my wife was the only woman for me and the only person I could ever see myself with. We talked about where things went wrong and realized that we had changed a lot as people since that time. We also realized that if we start to have problems, that we are going to seek counseling. I still feel to this day that my quitting the job I had in 2010 is what started the downhill slide. Yes, if we had a stronger relationship - one that was deeper, then we could have overcome it, but we didn't. However, there is no point of looking back other than to try to learn from our mistakes in the past. It ultimately boiled down to this - I wanted a family so bad from 1995 to 2006 - yes there was a danger of learning to live by myself and starting to like it but I have always tried to do the right thing. Deep down in my heart, I knew that someday I along with my wife would try to reunite our family....I was just scared as I didn't know if I could handle it. But I have been lucky that I have been able to and I find myself that I am right where I should be....with my family.
I didn't want to really post anything in this thread and I don't even really want to go into details, but the past 20 months or so have been the worst thus far.
