My story, i.e. 'what got me interested in life'

[ChipWrecked]

I don't get around 2p2 much any more but have read a couple of threads in EdD's forum in which I am not balla enough to post so I'm throwing a capsule version of how I got off the dime in life here.

I drifted along for years in the funk of feeling that I was the smartest guy in the room, but I don't know what to do with myself, etc. ad nauseum. Smoked a shitpot of dope as well.

At 33, I contracted testicular cancer. My oncologist told me, "This is pretty easy to treat, but there's a one in ten chance that I'm talking to a dead man here, so let's not [censored] around."

Surgery, chemo, I got better.

Two months later, I had jury duty. The trial involved a guy who tried to kill a whole family, including attacking a 13 year old boy and his nine year old sister with a knife. Both parents were killed. We sent him to death row in Georgia.

Those events were the epiphany I needed to get started striving for something, anything.

Ten years later I'm married, have two awesome kids, and am fairly happy with life.

I'm still a lazy, self-indulgent [censored]. I could be striving harder. But I support my family and we live better than probably four billion people in the world right now do.

My answer to "How do I figure out what to do with my life?" Have a brush with death, then send somebody else to theirs.

It makes any kind of life seem worth living, after all.

Life is about striving. You can always change your mind about what to strive for as you go along.

Best of luck to all.