The Courage to Surrender

My college sweetheart was five months pregnant when we got married at a formal wedding her family planned for us. Times were crazy as I'd graduated from college two weeks earlier and was getting ready to move to a strange city to begin a career. My concerns were where would we live; could I do the job I never tried, and would my salary be enough to pay the bills; give my new wife and I a life, and most of all provide the required baby things.

I excelled at my career, but money was tight, so we read and fed the ducks in a quiet lifestyle with our “love child.” Our only exception that summer of 1969 was the infamous Woodstock Music and Art Festival. I was concerned my best friend’s wife was pregnant, but we picked them up in New York State as we passed through from our new apartment in Connecticut.  

Within four years my wife was pregnant again, and my job was boring, so I got a new job about four hours to the west. It was a living accommodations upgrade; the job was challenging, and we met a nice couple with two kids the ages of ours. Over then few years we socialized and played sports with them. We became tight with them until the next better job came along. We moved six hours farther west.

And that was our lifestyle for the next 7 or 8 years until we could afford a house, but the change was negligible. The only significance aside from yard work was I met a couple of high-powered addicts with high-level jobs. With their assistance, I added speed to my habits. Fortunately, my LSD experiment was not impressive.

As my addiction to my increased use, my wife joined us to a lesser degree. Less than a year in our house, I was transferred to headquarters with recommendations. I was placed on the “high potential” list indicating the sky was the limit if I worked hard and stayed out of trouble.

Those two requirements proved too much for my lifestyle.

This was a Fortune 5 company so it surprised me as the year before the move I was asked to join an elite group headed to upper management, but it was all accounting, which wasn’t on my career path, so I quite early on. The day I handed in my book my boss went ballistic screaming – no one quits - it took me a lot to get you in.

After breaking down walls of digital ignorance the company gave me a management award, which I suggested we split with one of my direct reports. She was deserving, but once again that’s not done. After that embarrassment, I was told in private if projects are a success it’s because the project manager made it happen. For failed projects, it’s always the people actually doing the work who screwed it up.

At the corporate office, I fell in with a couple of partiers who brought me down to their lifestyle. I was not feeling good about myself – I was at the bottom of my life and with every opportunity to excel I failed. In 1982, I was given a project tha...