Part III-The Early 20’s

When I graduated from college in December 2000, the economy was quite a bit like it is right now. The dot com bubble had burst and our naive perception that we’d all be dot com millionaires within a year of graduating from Berkeley was shattered. The part time job I had during my last semester, turned into a full time job, which led to a layoff a week after I started working full time.  At that time, I wasn’t even thinking about personal development. All  I thought was “wow, life sucks.” However in a short time I found myself in a sales job at a software company.  This was my chance to make some real MONEY. Three weeks after I started there was an across the board twenty percent pay cut.  To add to that, I was working about twelve hours a day and spending at least three and a half hours a day in traffic. If I I’d known what I know, that time in traffic could have changed the trajectory of my early 20’s. Within 2 months of starting, my health started to deteriorate. I had stomach problems, and the doctors I met had no idea what was wrong, until one told me I had IBS.

By December, almost everybody at my company had been fired or left. My health seemed like it had reached it’s all time low and my stress it’s all time high. To add to it, I spent my days scouring the Internet for cures for IBS (something I did for almost 2 years). I returned home to my parents and lived with them for a few months. I took a trip to Europe to blow off some steam thinking that would be the answer. When I came back my luck started to turn, and I ended up getting a job offer and ended up making money by getting laid off three weeks after I started and receiving a large signing bonus at my next job. But, I still wasn’t 100% happy. I felt like I was missing something. Somewhere I had ridiculously convinced myself that a relationship was the answer, so off to the races I went, and that’s when my journey through the Skool of Life really started. In my quest for a relationship, I saw therapists, I saw hypnotists, and only had one question. What’s wrong with me? This is before I knew the power of questions. I continued my search for the cure for IBS. I ordered products, I listened to tapes,  I read books. Then one day, I finally decided to give up the search for the cure and accept it. Ironically (or not), it subsided significantly after that. Part IV