I did therapy / group therapy for about 9 years, but decided that it would be healthiest to leave San Francisco / America, and where I live now they don't really have therapists (and I've yet to grasp the language).
I reached out on HN mostly because I'm hoping to find some other crazy old men, as I've known quite a few people in my direct career field who I could be describing in this way (washed up young, formerly successful, diagnosed bi-polar or schizophrenic (I'm thankful I'm not schizophrenic. I've been to a few funerals for them. Most people my age from the bay would remember a sysadmin named SLF when I say this). )
My kid I don't interact with much, I decided a long time ago it was better to keep them shielded from my craziness. Now it's just text messages & international adventures once a year.
If you are still interested in therapy, online therapy is an option. Haven't used it myself but I have seen others vouch for it, ex. https://www.betterhelp.com/
I second the online therapy route. My wife is a psychiatrist and she did this with a few of her clients when we relocated and still wanted to keep seeing her. Some continue to see her well over a year later.
I'd do anything to leave tech, but I didn't even go to high school, I don't have any real options. None that pay a six figure salary, or even 1/2 that.
Every time I sell a company, or get fired, I tend to take 2-4 months off to backpack around the world, or find a new hobby / learn a new interest.. Then the reality that living in hostels doesn't pay the bills sets in and I have to go back to the real world.
"How I got paid to travel the world while learning to code".
^ The above is a pretty compelling story and the audience is there because a lot of people want to become digital nomads. Plus you have a pretty big amount of uniqueness. Most people might try that move when they are 20, but you can say "look, I was 40, I hit rock bottom and said fuck it, 3 weeks later I took my life savings and booked a 1 way ticket to Thailand".
Now you just need to figure out how to monetize it, and suddenly your backpacking trips aren't just what you want to do, it is the real world.
I think if you documented everything in the open (blogging, youtube, etc.) and then rolled it into a course once you had enough content / feedback, you'd have a pretty good shot to make some money out of it. Just based on your reply, you have the ability to write.
There's a huge community of digital nomads so I'm sure you'd be able to find some type of mentor who could help you out with the coding aspect while you do the majority of the learning on your own.
Aye, I've been on Lamotrigine for a decade now. It's the only thing I've had which didn't come with devastating negatives. Anti-depressants hospitalized me several times when I first started down this route. I think we went through a dozen different drugs over a 3 year period before lamotrigine + provigil created a modicum of stability.
> I have something of a cyclic regularity to my episodes (although what I have hasn't been clear cut episodes for a few years now) and I can see it getting better year after year.
I'm jealous of regularity. I'm ultradian cycling, they can last months, or days. As I get older, I don't get the joy of the manic highs anymore. I miss that quite a bit.
I'm from America, but don't live there, there's really not much of a social fabric. I couldn't even pay child support off of what I'd get, and I'd have to physically be in-country to qualify for any of that.
I reached out on HN mostly because I'm hoping to find some other crazy old men, as I've known quite a few people in my direct career field who I could be describing in this way (washed up young, formerly successful, diagnosed bi-polar or schizophrenic (I'm thankful I'm not schizophrenic. I've been to a few funerals for them. Most people my age from the bay would remember a sysadmin named SLF when I say this). )
My kid I don't interact with much, I decided a long time ago it was better to keep them shielded from my craziness. Now it's just text messages & international adventures once a year.