“The most intelligent men, like the strongest, find their happiness where others would find only disaster… They regard a difficult task as a privilege; it is to them a recreation to play with burdens that would crush all others.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
To recap Part 1:
It’s September 2016, and I’ve just fallen deeply in love.
I’ve also fallen deeply in debt, after my business partner spent $250,000 on a project that is now costing us tens of thousands of dollars a month to maintain, without generating any additional revenue.
Enter Part 2:
By November of 2016, my life as I knew it was in a death spiral.
My once-profitable business has taken on enormous overhead, and we’re bleeding cash at a catastrophic rate.
Meanwhile, my relationship with the woman I was certain I’d marry has just fallen apart, and my heart is broken more severely than I knew was possible.
In less than two months, I’ve fallen from the peak of the mountain to the dark, shadowy depths of the valley below.
Until now, I’ve always felt like I could do anything; conquer any challenge, overcome any struggle, scale any height.
But for the first time in my life, the thought crosses my mind:
I don’t know if I’ll make it through this.
To make matters worse:
The only thing that can save me now — the clarity, precision, and resilience of my own mind — has never been more muddy, unclear and unreliable.
I’m eating poorly, and hardly sleeping.
I’m stuck in a foreign country, living with the business partner who ignited this shitstorm.
I’m stumbling to work every morning and crawling through my daily tasks; barely managing to do the bare minimum, let alone the herculean-extra my business badly needs.
And, alarmingly, I’m having heart palpitations multiple times a day.
This is the point at which the pressure either forges a diamond or bursts the pipes, and it feels like several pipes are already beginning to leak…
(to be continued tomorrow in Part 3…)
– T
