About 30 minutes ago, I sent an e-mail to my boss at unnamed technology company, officially serving notice of my departure from unnamed technology company on Friday, 30 December 2005. New Year's Eve will have a whole new meaning this year.

The plan is to quit unnamed technology company at the end of the year, go full-time at the coffee shop 2 January 2006, and start culinary school in February or March. I like the idea of having normal 40-hour weeks for a bit. Then around this time next year, I should be starting my externship for culinary school. I'm hoping to do my externship in some exotic locale, like Hawaii, or New Zealand, or Europe.

It's still so hard to believe that I've effectively thrown away the last 3 years of my life to projects at unnamed technology company that all got the axe without any sort of closure at all. Even right up to the very end here, I'm working with a team with three other engineers, spinning our wheels in the muck doing busy work that's going to be thrown away within six months (if current plans hold). When your countless efforts go unrecognized, and everything you've worked for, everything you've poured all your energy into, is tossed aside like refuse in the dust bin and forgotten, it's hard to say, "I care about the work I do here."

A lot of the people I work with have fallen into the Money Trap. And I admit I was there too around this time last year. But you know what? I'd rather be happy and poor than sad and rich. I mean, what good is money if you're not going to enjoy it because either you don't have time to spend it (working too much), or you buy all this crap and realise you're still unhappy. Life is short. I learned that the hard way.

Life is short.... My back injury two years ago taught me a lot about life.

For those of you not aware, I was sent on a trip on business with unnamed technology company for three weeks. My workaholic team lead worked us literally 80 hours a week. The main problem was that we sat at desks 80 hours a week for three weeks. I know at least two of us developed back problems during that time, though mine was the worst of the lot. I ended up with a herniated disc between vertebrae L5 and S1, which meant the protrusion was pinching my sciatic nerve, the main nerve trunk that runs down into the legs. I spent a week on my stomach, trying to get to the doctor several times, losing 20 pounds, and then I was hopped up on drugs for a couple of months.

I learned a lot from that experience:

• "Life's too short to let life get you down," meaning that life can get in the way of true happiness, and when it does it's time to start going after a life that compliments the true happiness you want.


• I understand drug addiction. Though my experience with prescription narcotics only scratches the surface of the very tip of the iceberg, it's easy to imagine myself falling into chemical dependence on opiates. When all you've known for a week is intolerable physical pain, the fact that a little pill or a few drops of liquid could take all that away is a very powerful fact to know. Morphine, Demerol, Vicodin, Diazepam. All very nice things. Naproxen (the active ingredient in Aleve) doesn't work on me anymore. Had too much of that.


• Life has a lot to offer. There's a lot of stuff to do in this world, and we're only here for a short time (see Bullet 1). I battled depression and suicidal thoughts during my recovery. I finally concluded that there's so much more to see and do that I haven't seen or done. And seeing and doing a lot of those things involves taking risks. Sometimes big risks.

So here I am. I'm quitting unnamed technology company, taking a huge pay cut to work in a coffee shop, and going to culinary school. Some people think I'm throwing away five years of nationally-ranked univeristy education. I'm not saying that I won't ever go back to software engineering, but right now this will make me happy, and that's all that really matters right now. I feel a little sorry for leaving my friends behind at unnamed technology company, but I'm also hoping I can inspire them to have their own epiphanies.

¶ 12:18 AM