I had a horrible experience in school. I was bullied at every school I went to, I had to attend boarding school for 4 years because my life would have been a dead end otherwise. Boarding school was akin to hell but I endured the 24/7 bullying so that I could slug out an education for myself. I was eventually expelled from boarding school for hacking, which in retrospect was one of the best things that happened to me.
The emotional scars of that experience left me vulnerable, I barely made it to university - had to travel 1100km from my home to attend, tried to support myself while doing university full time. I lost my job because I was falling into depression because my girlfriend at the time was drifting away from me. She eventually left me and I was all alone. Broke, homeless and too proud to go home.
I managed to salvage some odd jobs on freelancer/elance started to climb out of the emotional rut. Doing freelance work using university wifi while homeless and using uni showers really is an experience. I got determined to not to live like that so I put aside my pride, moved in with family and got stuck into honing my skills as a programmer, doing freelance work and going back to university.
Programming brought back my pride, it re-established my self esteem, I ended up having the confidence to start my own company, which fast forward 3 years or so is still running and is a multi-million dollar company. I have since moved on, am now internationally traveled and I now make in excess of 150k/yr.
Looking back on my short life a few things ring very true. Often alot of the worst things to happen to me have also been the best things. If I wasn't so downtrodden I wouldn't be so strong now, if my girlfriend didn't leave me the way she did I never would have been so determined to prove her wrong.
So no matter how bad things seem, remember that there is always time to make things better.
I had a horrible experience in school. I was bullied at every school I went to, I had to attend boarding school for 4 years because my life would have been a dead end otherwise. Boarding school was akin to hell but I endured the 24/7 bullying so that I could slug out an education for myself. I was eventually expelled from boarding school for hacking, which in retrospect was one of the best things that happened to me.
The emotional scars of that experience left me vulnerable, I barely made it to university - had to travel 1100km from my home to attend, tried to support myself while doing university full time. I lost my job because I was falling into depression because my girlfriend at the time was drifting away from me. She eventually left me and I was all alone. Broke, homeless and too proud to go home.
I managed to salvage some odd jobs on freelancer/elance started to climb out of the emotional rut. Doing freelance work using university wifi while homeless and using uni showers really is an experience. I got determined to not to live like that so I put aside my pride, moved in with family and got stuck into honing my skills as a programmer, doing freelance work and going back to university.
Programming brought back my pride, it re-established my self esteem, I ended up having the confidence to start my own company, which fast forward 3 years or so is still running and is a multi-million dollar company. I have since moved on, am now internationally traveled and I now make in excess of 150k/yr.
Looking back on my short life a few things ring very true. Often alot of the worst things to happen to me have also been the best things. If I wasn't so downtrodden I wouldn't be so strong now, if my girlfriend didn't leave me the way she did I never would have been so determined to prove her wrong.
So no matter how bad things seem, remember that there is always time to make things better.