Don't, under any circumstances, do this to yourself

Life is not a highway.

It’s more of an off-road dirt and gravel path through rough terrain in the middle of nowhere. Your career, your personal life, and your family life are all wrapped around it like a Twizzler’s.

To recap my own adult history:

I started out as a lowly graduate student working towards my PhD in the field of computer engineering. It took five years, blood, sweat, and a lot of tears as well as sleepless nights where I wondered if it was all worth the sacrifice.

I persisted. I persevered. I defended my dissertation.

Then, I had no prospects lined up after graduation. None. It was 2010, and the US was still recovering from the shock of Wall Street. I very nearly went into the Air Force for NCO training before I managed to find a two-year teaching position for SC State University as a tenure-track professor.

I was among the youngest ones in the state at the time.

After completing that stint, I finally landed my dream job as a signal integrity test engineer at Intel. I thought I had it made. I was single, approaching 30, and had no plans to get married and settle down.

Four years later, I was laid off. It was at that moment that I realized there was no such thing as company loyalty for high performers. I was expendable, disposable, and while I could have just dumped my girlfriend and moved west like all the rest of my colleagues, I chose to get married and find a job in Taiwan.

Two years after that, I returned to the US with my infant son, my wife, and three cats.

I don’t ever want to do that again. I learned more about what it means to play life on ultra-hard difficulty in terms of logistics than I ever thought I would. You haven’t put your sanity to the test until you’re trying to feed an infant, balance a pet carrier on one arm, and order food for your wife in the airport.

We returned home and rebuilt from nothing. I found a test engineering position that enables me to balance both family and career. We had our second child towards the end of the pandemic, and we’ve moved three times to finally settle in a home that we plan to stay with until our children are grown.

But you know how plans can go. Given the current state of affairs, there’s a small, ever-growing chance, that everything can go pear-shaped in more ways than one.

Whatever you do, though, don’t, under any circumstances, do this one thing…

You wanna know? Keep reading…

Don’t.

I repeat. Don’t.

Don’t ever take your situation for granted.

Don’t ever think that your life needs to be “easier” so that you can have some air.

The challenges, the trials, the obstacles…they’re the way forward.

They’re on the path for a reason. I don’t care if you’re rich AF or dirt poor. You’re still alive. You’ve made it this far. Whatever you went through to get here was there for a reason. Wishing you could go back and do it over again with different outcomes robs you of the intangible lessons and the strength of character that you attained from the experience.

You think I shared my own life story to brag about it? Hell no. I know that despite all the craziness I went through that I am privileged to have been raised with the perspective and mindset to execute despite all the challenges. We all have our choices, and few of us have the luxury of contemplating them, consider all the angles, look for the best course of action, before taking a few steps.

Most of the time, you’ve only got moments before you must act.

I talk to people at work all the time, and they’re from all walks of life. I have an advanced degree, but it’s because I was lucky to have all the opportunities that lead me down that path. Many of my coworkers didn’t.

We all have our demons to fight. We all have very different opinions of the world in terms of religion, politics, and family.

If there’s one thing that I’ve realized from staying connected and regularly talking to others, it’s that our struggles in life aren’t all that different. We all have to make our choices about what to do with our time on this planet, and I’m here to make the most of it by writing, communicating, and sharing the lessons I’ve learned so far.

Don’t ever take your life for granted. You have more to be thankful for than you realize.

If nothing else, act with conviction

That’s my message to you.

The digital heirloom project is my version of this mindset.

I’m not the best writer, nor am I all that good at promoting myself or my ideas yet.

But I’ve been doing this for a few years now, and I’ve come a long way from barely being able to put together 250 characters to share with the world.

I have more ideas, more ideas, and more ways to express myself now than I ever thought I’d have, and it’s because I write every single day that I’ve managed to reach this level.

This is only the beginning.

Whatever you do, don’t hold yourself back from acting with conviction.

What are you grateful for? What are you passionate about? What can you not shut up about?

The answers are where your real journey begins.