I don't know if this is going to help anyone, but I want to share it just in case it does.
In August of 2022, I was at the top of my game, had a great job, my girlfriend just bought a beach house, I was doing well financially, and everything was good. My girlfriend and I were at her beach house, finishing up some renovations and furnishing the thing when my life changed forever. I was going to bed, going to get up early and go fishing, just turned out the lights, and on my way to bed. That's when I mistakenly turned left into what I thought was the bedroom, but it was actually the stairwell.
The first step is probably what broke my hip, but then I bounced step by step down to the bottom of the stairs. I thought to myself, that's going to hurt in the morning, but I'm going to get up and walk it off. So I tried to get up, but nothing happened. I tried again, and nothing happened. At that point I realized that something was really wrong. Turns out I had shattered my femur right where it meets the ball of the hip socket. I don't mean I fractured it -- I mean I shattered it into hundreds of pieces. On the X-ray, the bone just looked like a cloud. I was fortunate that I only broke my hip and didn't break my neck or fracture my skull.
The ER doctor told me that after they pinned it all back together, I would feel better. He either lied, or he was wrong. Shattering your hip is not something I would wish on anybody. I can't think of anything that could possibly be more debilitating or painful than that (although I am sure there are things, but I don't want to think about them).
I was laid up in bed for weeks, and during that time I ran out of Netflix shows that I wanted to watch. I couldn't sleep, and I actually think I may have reached the end of the Internet (ok, I know that's not possible). Eventually, I decided I was going to take the down time to teach myself electrical, but as the Internet does, my searches for electrical would turn into electronics when I would fall asleep. I would wake up in the middle of a lecture about valance layers and silicon doping and PNP vs NPN semiconductors. Before I knew it, I was buying Arduinos and learning how to program them. I taught myself C++, and I learned how to program micro-controllers.
Eventually, I wanted to build something tangible. I had played with sensors, pwm, adc, dac, ldrs, and a whole host of other technologies, but I wanted to build something that was in a metal enclosure --- that's where my love for music and my new-found passion came together. My ah-ha moment was a guitar pedal.
In July of 2023, I bought a soldering station, and I built my first guitar pedal in August of 2023.
When I broke my hip, I contemplated suicide. I thought my life would never be the same. I was totally depressed, and I couldn't see a future where I would ever be happy again. I still have days where I realize my life is never going to be the same as it was before my accident, but my perspective has changed. I now think about my life as a blessing -- I could have died that day in the stairwell.
I realized that I have a choice -- I can either think about my life as it would have been if I had never fallen down that stair well, or I could think about my life as if I would have would have been if I had died when I fell down that stair well.
I'm happiest when it think about the latter.
I guess the moral of this story is that none of us knows what life has in store for us, but we all know how the story ends. So, in the mean time, enjoy the ride as much as you can. Sometimes you have to look for the joy -- sometimes it finds you, but it's always there if you look for it.
. I am throwing whatever together to see what sticks.
