Becoming Bipolar

This is going to be a long one folks so hang in there. How did this all begin? I was living in Minnesota at the time. I had a job I liked, I worked for people I didn’t like, I had friends I didn’t like. At the time I was madly in love with a woman. She wasn’t so in to me. One time we were at a bar, and she new I was totally in love with her, so she decided to hit on a guy right in front of me. To put it lightly, she totally crushed my soul.

I was devastated, crushed….  I had a hard time even going to work….  I truly felt hopeless, I was surrounded by people that disrespected me. I didn’t know what to do. I hated my job, my friends and my life. There was one thing I always wanted to try. Something that would pull me out of this funk I was in. It would be an escape from my surroundings. I would start a business.

I was going into unmarked territory here. The most business work I’ve done on my own was freelance website projects. This was something I’ve never done before. What I wanted to do was print t-shirts and other forms of clothing. I would print and design shirts for other people and when I had some free time I would design and sell my own shirts. In theory this sounds great. But it is not as easy as it sounds.

So I went out and bought a $1000 screenprinting kit from the internet. It pretty much worked, a good press to learn on and I made some money doing it. I had it in my garage until I got in trouble with the city.

What I wanted to do was put a sign up in my front yard promoting my business. I ended up having to go in front of the city board and discuss with the town board members. My neighbors showed up and I got turned down. I truly pissed off the city inspector, I’ve never seen a man so upset. So the board members said I could no longer print shirts at my home or garage. Wow, what do I do now?

I figured I was too far into the business quit, so I started looking for a space to put my equipment. There were a bunch of small retail spaces in town, I found one for like $250 a month and I setup shop. I thought I would expand my equipment so I loaned $8000 form my parents.

I fixed the business space up. resurfaced the old floors, painted the walls, put in a sink, put in new ceiling tiles, and even a $2000 air exchanger the city inspector made me put in.

Got a big client, my first week in business I got a check for $20,000. Things were looking pretty good. Nothing could go wrong right? Read on.

Things were going good for awhile, got my big order out…..  but then while I was at my day job, I was starting to feel strange sensations in my head….  like I could feel the blood pressure in my head getting intensely high. Then the next day I just felt like I was going to have a good day. For some reason I just knew. And then the next day, I felt like I was going to have a bad day.

Eventually these “swings” got to the point of my friends calling my parents to come up from Milwaukee to come and get me. At that point things were really bad. My parents stayed the night at my place, but I was so freaking out I asked my roommate if he had a gun I could use. Thankfully, he said no. But what he did do is call the cops on me. They came and picked me up and dropped me off at the hospital.

I woke up completely startled out of bed. My parents were sitting next to me. I was to remain in that hospital for another three weeks. They tried to snap me out of my mania with zyprexa. Sad to say that it didn’t work. After two and a half weeks they released me to a half way home. Lets just say things didn’t work out as they hoped. At one point I drove my car to the highest bluff and almost jumped off. I remember handing from a branch over the ledge, that is as close to dying as I’ve ever gotten. I never want to go there again…..

I dragged myself off the ledge and asked the nearest person for a cell phone to call 911. The cops came again. Brought me back to the hospital, and gave me lithium. It actually worked. I snapped out of my craziness. They transfered me to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester Minnesota. I stayed there for a week. My parents took me back to the Milwaukee area. I lived with my parents for 2 years. It was sometimes a struggle living with my parents as an adult.

My father lost his job, so we decided to start the printing business up again. We ran it for almost 3 years, and then sold it to a sign company.

I eventually got a job as a apartment manger – Mr. Ropper style. I liked renting out apartments, just wasn’t much of a handyman. I also got a job as a grocery store stocker. I wasn’t very good at that, I could never remember what aisle things were in. Kept that job for 2-3 months and got a job a Kohls Corporate Center. I did marketing and advertising for their stores. I was only a contractor at that point. They ended up letting me go after christmas.

I was desperate for a job, so I took one as a reclaimer at a bigger printing company. I worked my way up to screenmaker, then to customer service. That place was hard to work for sometimes. The pay wasn’t great and an employee had the habit of exploding on people.

I could go on about the next series of jobs that didn’t work out but I won’t. I’m going to tell you what did work out, the business that I started a year ago – Digital Karma It was done better than I could have hoped. I basically do everything I did before, except I don’t print or embroider anything. I broker out almost everything I do. I still do some design work. Most of it goes to my father, whom I pay with golf equipment. If I have a big website, I’ll just give my buddy Scott a call and we’ll partner on big sites. One thing that I haven’t done is sell promotional items, and I just sold my first messenger bags to a great client of mine.

What is the point of this story? The point is I never would have guessed all of these things would have happened. Not in a million years. But they happen every day. You just never know when the unexpected will happen. Sometimes you have to make the best of what happens to you. I have no regrets at all. I truly believe this was meant to happen. For what reason, I don’t know, I guess you just have to have faith and trust in the high power. Sometimes that’s all you can do.

I now have a business that is going places, an amazing wife, a baby girl to call my own, a house, a car. I don’t think I need much more. Things aren’t perfect, I don’t think they ever will be, but things could definitely be worse. I am thankfull for what I have. Gratitude is my new friend.

I hope this story has helped someone feel like there story isn’t as crazy as they think. It was hard writing this down, those memories aren’t that great. But it feels good to looks back at mistakes you have learned something from.

Thats all I got…  until tomorrow……