After dropping out of college twice and working several dead-end jobs, I struggled to find my place in the world.
This is a story about how my girlfriend (now wife) saved my career without even realizing it.
In 2016, I had no direction. I felt stuck. I had no real plan for my life, just this growing fear that I was wasting time while everyone else was figuring things out.
I wasn’t struggling with depression. I was actually in the best shape of my life, and I had just started a relationship with the woman I would eventually marry. But I didn’t truly feel like I brought any purpose to the world
During one of my dead-end jobs, as I mowed the grass of a softball field pondering my future, I thought back to a moment from years earlier.
I was about twelve or thirteen, sitting in the living room with my grandma (who passed away this last year) while she sat in her favorite armchair that she would always read in. We were watching How It’s Made on the Discovery Channel, and during a commercial break, she turned to me and asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”
I shrugged. “Maybe a teacher, maybe an airplane mechanic. I’m not sure.”
She nodded and said, “Well, if you’re ever in doubt about what you want to do when you grow up, do something with computers. They’re the future, and they’re always going to be around.”
That memory hit me hard. I had no idea what I wanted, but I knew I didn’t want to stay stagnant.
So I decided to try something new. I started teaching myself to code, spending every free moment learning. It took years of grinding—long nights obsessing over the difference between padding and margin, debugging database connections on my cheap 10 year old laptop, and trying to figure out the difference in Java and JavaScript.
Eventually–after 2 years of my unhealthy obsession with pushing pixels and painful studying for job interviews, I got my first job offer. An IT Support Specialist for a federal contractor. It wasn’t the sexy startup I had envisioned, but it was a real job that gave me a real future. It felt like everything was finally coming together.
Then, just days after accepting the offer, my car broke down… for like the 10th time that year.
I didn’t have the money to fix it, and suddenly the job I had worked so hard for was slipping through my fingers… and I hadn’t I even started yet. It felt like a cruel joke. Every time it seemed like I was about to get ahead, something knocked me back down.
I was laying on the couch in the cramped living room I shared with my brother and best friend at the time. I was utterly defeated.
As I laid there feeling sorry for myself, the door opened, my girlfriend (now wife) came over to hang out. She walked over to me, knowing what was going through my mind, as she ad experienced the highs and lows of getting a job offer and then my car blowing up on my.
When she sat on the couch after moving my feed out of the way, she was quiet for a moment, then asked, “When do you start your new job?”
I told her, and she immediately realized it was right around the time she’d be leaving for Kenya on a mission trip. Without hesitation, she said, “What if I let you borrow my car?”
I looked at her, caught off guard. “You’d really do that?”
“Of course,” she said. “It’s not like I’ll be using it.”
I hesitated, unsure if I could accept something so generous. I don’t exactly have the best history with cars and I did not want to be the one responsible for her 1996 Nissan Sentra dyeing. But she was already dialing her insurance company to make sure everything would be okay.
A few minutes later, she turned to me and smiled. “You’re good to go.”
That moment changed everything. Because of her kindness, I was able to get to work, push through the imposter syndrome, and grow into my role. By the time she returned from Kenya, I had saved enough for a down payment on a newish car– a used 2018 Hyundai Accent that we just replaced after 208,000 miles.
Looking back, I realize how hard it can be to accept help from others. Even those who love us. But sometimes, you have to lean on others to make it through. We all need support, and one day, others might rely on you. It’s all about giving and receiving love with nothing expected in return.