(Missed the earlier parts? Start here)
2004: The trade school
I decided that I should go into manufacturing. Specifically, tooling and machining. The local community college had a program on that. I enrolled and started to attend class. I eventually left the home improvement company to focus more on my studies.
The profession was working on machining equipment to cut metal at very precise measurements, making tools and parts for companies.
I remember working on a piece of metal in the class and making a mistake. Go to measure it and discover that the part is now out of tolerance. I am shocked. Spent a lot of time working on it, and now had to start over.
This left me with anxiety working with the equipment.
I eventually started to work at a machining company while I was studying. The work and studying were going okay. However, I was getting into conversations that maybe this was not the profession for me. Maybe I am better suited for another profession. The teacher at the community college seemed to suggest this. Also, I remember a conversation with a co-worker who asked me if the classes that I was taking were transferable to another profession.
I was not willing to change professions. It seemed too hard to do that now. However, working in smelly, loud and busy manufacturing locations would be my career if I did not make the change.
At this time, I remember that I was feeling a strange problem and decided that I needed to stop my vice of masturbation. This I was able to successfully do from that time forward.
Another hospitalization
For some reason, I decided to stop taking Zyprexa around this time. This would not be the last. However, I stopped taking it for a few months. It would seem that stopping it would take you back to the state before it was started. However, for me this was not the case. Either the disease had progressed, or the drug had changed my mind, the place that I was going to was hell.
As I started to come off the drug, my weight started to drop. Maybe a month into the cessation I quit the job that I got and stopped going to the community college and stayed in my bedroom.
I eventually am hospitalized again at the same hospital that I was last time.
When I started to be seen by the psychiatrist there, I would not speak back to him. He would ask me questions and I would be mute. But I start on Zyprexa again.
He would visit me day after day until, one session I spoke through the entire interview. I remember his response, “So the medication is working. There are some people you think the medication will help and it does not, and some people you think it will not and it does”. Clearly, he thought I was the latter.
I was really sick when I arrived at the hospital: I was reclusive and I would stay in the room and not go to programs. I was in a “scary and unreal world”. Zyprexa had brought me back to heaven again.
I stayed there for a month or two. However, he would not discharge me. The problem started when he asked me if I heard anything anyone else would not. I said I did. This was a mind mistake. I was telling them that I heard click or snapping sounds in walls and I was. However, I should have been aware that others could also hear them. Particularly, before hospitalization, I remember hearing the wall snap once and our dog’s head turn and look in the direction of the noise. What I really meant is that these noises were not normal.
So, if you are hearing voices or things that someone else does not, I learned it is a serious condition in psychiatry. After this event I would be less forthcoming with my psychiatrists about this.
After being in the hospital for about two months, I am forced to go to the long-term psychiatric facility again. Not because I was still sick, but because I said that I was hearing something other people did not.
The doctor at the facility does not seem to care about the noises. I believe that he could see that I was back to normal. They have level procedure and if you reached a certain level, you would be discharged. I was discharged fairly quickly; I believe in about a month or so.
2006 – 2008: Restarting community college and transferring to university
Back at home, I am now out of the community college program that I was in. I had completed a year, so I had a certificate but not the associate degree. I decided to pursue a different major. It was in what I found interesting: electronics. I really wanted to major in computer engineering but was told that electrical engineering was the better starting major and I could switch to computer engineering when I transferred to a university after successfully completing my studies at the community college.
So, I enthusiastically started the new major. I had worked with electronics and programming before as a hobby, so I had a head start. The program was difficult, but I was able to get really good grades. I successfully completed two years at the community college (with honors) and applied to a local university (RIT) to continue in computer engineering.
RIT accepts me. Again, I was able to get A’s and B’s there throughout the program at the university.
I should mention that, without Zyprexa, I would not have been able to start or continue the coursework. Without continuing on it, there would be no career. I should have understood that by now, but I still wanted to stop it there once near the end. Things started to deteriorate the only time that I tried to stop it at the university. I remember that I basically failed the mid-term at one class after that. However, I somehow started taking it again and was able to bring my grades back up and ended up getting a B in that class. Several other inconsequential courses I decided to drop at that time.
The university, as part of the program, had a requirement that students had to have 5 quarters of working in their major. They called it co-ops. You were released from taking class during the co-op.
Co-ops
My first co-op was locally at a company that designed and manufactured warehouse cranes. The work is resolve problems (bugs) in their online ordering system.
I was able to solve the bugs, but I felt that it took too much time for me to do that. However, once when I was talking with the manager, she briefly went over how much a more successful co-op (from the same university) was taking. It was about the same. This relieved a major concern for me.
I ended up enjoying the work. Hunting down problems and solving them proved satisfying for me.
I was scheduled for two quarters with this company. However, this was around 2008 and the company is struggling by the downturn of the economy. It started to lay off workers. They agreed to keep me for the rest of the quarter, but they would not be able to have me work for the second.
I was not able to find another co-op on that short notice. That would set up a missing quarter of co-op around my graduation, and a very fortunate situation for me. I will reach that point later.
I had two more co-ops left. There is class time in between. Class was going well and planning of coursework seemed to be fine.
Next co-op that I found was in Syracuse. About an hour away from where I lived with my parents. This was at a medical equipment designer and manufacturer. I see their equipment periodically at doctor’s offices.
I found an apartment there and settled into a three-month co-op. The work was mainly testing a mobile medical machine that was on a cart. They had a few co-ops there from other places.
I remember as I was getting prepared to leave, my parents were with my aunt, and they were uncertain if I would be successful there. However, it proved to be a non-worrying time.
2010: Co-op in Maine
The next co-op was even farther away, in Portland, Maine. It was at a microchip design and manufacturing company. I found an apartment there, upstairs, at a realty company, in a small city center. This co-op would last for six months.
This one was the closest to my major. I was working on designing a few circuit boards that would test some of the microchips that they were making.
They had produced a micro-chip and had included a piece of functionality that was inactive on it. They planned to make it active at a future time. However, they had not fully tested it yet. So, they tasked me to do that job.
I worked on this for a month or two and was able to find one issue with their chip. It was a mistake that a design engineer made during development. Simply, there was a missing connection inside their chip. They were able to identify it and planned to make the correction for the next version of their part.
I also worked on other boards, but this was the main one. I remember asking my boss if they had any employment opportunities available at their company, after I graduated. My manager surprisingly stated that “We don’t have employment opportunities that will be at your level”.
I remember a few company outings that we did. One of them was taking a sailboat out into the bay and back. One of them was lunch on the harbor with our team. At the end of the co-op, my manager gifted me with a wooden framed, medium size photo of the sail experience that we had. I kept it in my cubicles after that.
2011: Finding employment after graduation
So, as I was getting ready to close out the major that I was in, I had an issue. I had a missing co-op. I talked with the dean of the department. He said that if I had found full-time employment, he would waive the co-op. If I did not, then I had to find another co-op and then I would be given my diploma.
I looked for full-time work in Rochester and was not able to find one.
One of my teachers, who worked at Texas Instruments a while back, knew of an opportunity that was opening there. He connected me with the group, and I interviewed for the position. This was a co-op position. It was based in Dallas, Texas. They offer me the position (for just three months) and the moving expenses they compensate.
I decided on taking the offer. My parents were adamantly opposed to it. However, there really nothing that they could do about it. I took their advice and left my car at their place and flew over to Dallas with my belongings.
I had an apartment that was right across the fence from the company. Having no car, I used a company shuttle that would take me to and from the office to a nearby train station. From there I would walk to my apartment.
I started in May of 2011. Just in time for the summer heat. I still don’t know how I was able to walk over a half a mile in that intense heat.
Texas Instruments is a microchip design and manufacturing company that is really big (currently over 30,000 employees). They have locations across the world, but their headquarters are in Dallas, Texas. They started making radars for oil hunting many years back but later transformed to a microchip manufacturing company. Maybe you know of Jack Kilby, he stayed at the office at TI during the company vacation period and discovered how to make the first microchip.
The team that I was in was mainly made of older workers, some younger. They were newly formed after the company decided to pursue an idea that was new to the business. They were pouring money into this startup group.
My task was to develop code for a radio part of the product. Some starting code was already written, however, the code describing the network of wireless radios was not.
First, I was not sure how I was to accomplish this. A wireless stack (program) was not something that I was familiar with. Fortunately, I was able to reference another wireless stack in the company for another project. With this as a starting point I was able to make a simpler version for our group.
As my three months were nearing completion, my manager decided that they would offer me full-time employment at the group. I gladly accepted. Surprisingly at that time my boss and co-workers happened to think highly of me. I did not expect this, but I was honored. This would continue throughout my career.
This group was probably my more fun position that I held at the company. I remember getting up early to be in the office. The team was close and were nice people. We would go and grab food to eat at Whole Foods periodically or other places.
One example of what happened toward the end of my employment there. The manager wanted to have Bluetooth on our part. I had a few examples of Bluetooth code that I got from another company group. I had about three versions. However, they did not seem to work. The code was large and not readily understandable. After working around testing various combinations, I was able to get it to work.
They ask me to demo it to our group. After a successful demo, the manager said, “We now have Bluetooth”.
About a year into our work, we were ready to release the product to be sold. It would need constant work after that as we planned to build-up new functionality.
However, unexpectedly one day, a year into my joining the group, the company decided that they did not want to launch the product. Our group was dissolved. I have a short time to find another employment.
A manager in our group was able to find an opening in another part of the company. I interview for the position and they accept me.
The work was supporting a couple of chips that were in development. One was a lead customer that was working on developing a glucose monitor patch. The patch would have our microchip with a battery and a glucose sensor. Once attached to the skin, it would monitor the glucose constantly. The sugar level is checkable with NFC on the smartphone.
This development required working with a group of co-workers in Germany. In fact, I was the only one based in America. I was able to help support the customer who also was in America. This required about a trip to Germany every year, over my five years of working in that position. I also traveled to India and Spain as part of this group.
Life in Texas
My life largely consisted of work, home and church while I was in Texas. Church was an important part, and I would attend every Sunday.
The church that I ended up going to in Texas was unlike any that I have been before and any later. It was small, less than 50 people. There was not even an official pastor there (but a deacon). It was in Russian, which I understand. I am not great at speaking Russian, so my language sometimes was not understandable to some.
The pastor would periodically asked to preach in that church, which I reluctantly did. I would prepare the whole sermon and then read it out.
What really made this church special were the “youth group”. It was anyone who is not married. It was maybe a little more than a dozen people. However, they were good friends. After church, on Sunday night, we would gather at a house and the host would lead us in Bible study. There would be food and discussion that could last late.
We would travel around mid-America to occasional conferences, mainly that were youth based.
Toward the end of my stay there, the youth were getting married one by one and soon having kids.
I thought about marriage. But every time I thought about it, I knew it was not my time yet, I was not ready. Outside I looked like a successful businessman. I had one of the most respected jobs among the youth, however inside I had some development to do. The thought of a huge marriage ceremony, with hundreds of people and you are the focus of attention, terrified me. I just would not try it.
What was probably helping this condition was that my sexual energy was being spent on these non-human workers. I remember thinking that there does not two or three days go by that I don’t have sex with them, for years.
Early on I would be the male having sex with the female. However, for some reason I could not hold that setup. The setup would shift to me being in the female body, in seconds. I was upset early on, but later grew accustomed to that. That became the normal as the years would go by and largely is until today. The position is fluid, and I could try to shift to the male, but it is difficult, and I am sometimes unsuccessful, so usually not worth the effort.
Early on I lived in an apartment complex for a couple of years. However, it was like a prison cell. It was made of concrete and there was not that much foliage there. I found a ranch that was for rent and got it. It had four bedrooms! It was not in good condition, but I had my own fenced in backyard and a suburb like neighborhood that was not too far away from work. This helped me feel at peace and helped my health.
Going back to the youth groups meetings, there is another piece of information that I would like to share. One of the deacon’s daughters had a talent. She was a prophetess. Best way to describe this to people who don’t understand this is that she was able to channel God. Channel is a non-Christian word, but it is exactly what she was able to do. I have met other people like her, but she was the only one who would do that for most of my stay there at our church.
During prayer, a couple times a year this would happen, she would start talking, essentially what God was saying through her and visit person after person. I will share one of the things that God spoke through her to me. He said that my soul would be well, and I would know my life’s purpose. Each of us before coming into the world has a certain reason or plan for choosing our life. As I thought about this I am filled with awe. Here I was coming out of sickness, and I would know my life’s purpose. Not many people do. I wondered what it was.
Today I believe that I know it. I will get to it later. However, I am increasingly feeling the soul wellness.
What I started suffering throughout my later part of living in Texas, was this feeling of fear that would flood my heart. I would feel it on the weekends in anticipation of going to work Monday. Feel it at work as some of the stakes there were big. Feel it preaching in church.
I remember what must have been a Saturday, as I arrived at the Whole Foods parking lot for shopping that it was particularly intense. This one time, I just tried to live in the moment and pretend like it would be the weekend for a long time. It was overwhelming but I tried to not let it influence me.
Vision
I would like to go over one vision that I had when I was in Texas. These were not simply limited to that time.
As I sat at work, I was having a hard time mentally. Somehow, I focused, and I started to see a spiritual scene. The scene initially was in a silhouette, black and white. In that scene, Jesus and I were standing by each other. Suddenly, there was a group of people at some distance, and they started to throw objects at our faces.
That scene somehow transitioned into another scene. It was no longer in silhouette. I saw beautiful rolling hills with green grass and a stream running through them. Jesus took an infant and carried it over the stream. The infant started to fly on its own into the sky, until it became less and less visible.
For years I have not known the full interpretation of this dream, however as I was writing this work, I was able to fully understand it.
The people throwing objects at our faces, I believe, represents people who will verbally and publicly attack me in the future.
The next scene with the rolling hills and the infant, represents a child that I will lose, sometime later.
I am kind of surprised that Jesus was in both scenes. I feel that maybe we could be enemies (for reasons that will be clear later), but it does not appear that way, even until now. For this I have comfort and am grateful.
Increasing sickness
However, toward the end of my stay there, I was noticing problems. I was feeling weak and had to take breaks. I tried drinking more coffee and mixing in molasses helped initially.
One example I will give, is that one day, in the afternoon, I really felt weak. I knew that I needed a break. I needed to lay down. So, I went to my car and laid down in the back seat. As soon as I laid down, I realized that I was gravely tired. The problem was with my gut, that was the source, I could feel it. It was as if I had a gunshot there and I was trying to live with it.
A little bit of revelation here, people these days say that the gut is the second brain. I believe that the second brain is the human soul. It is located in that area. My soul had a grievous wound. No doctor would be able to help me with this (other than saying take it easy). The medication was helping, but it was like a painkiller. It was not healing me. It seems like that wound was getting worse over the years.
I have faith in The Workers. They have been working on me for almost two decades. Initially, according to God, the progress was very, very slow. This was during my stay in Texas. However, he said that he will speed this up in the future.
Why was it so slow? I have a theory. I heard one person say that God starts from the inside and works to the outside. The effect is immediate in this case. You quickly feel it. However, The Workers start from the outside and work to the inside. I suspect they are working on the outside and the outside is big, and it takes a lot of time until they reach me. Until then the changes are slow.
One example is like the Thailand cave rescue. The coach and his team were having fun one day exploring a cave. However, rainfall and flood blocked their way out. They were trapped, deep inside. It was dark there; they were running out of oxygen.
It was the same for me through the years. I remember one day; I got a little bit of oxygen in a moment but then it was gone. Remember thinking “When will it return”. I was waiting on the promise of better times. The pressure was great, and I did not know if I could hold on much longer.
It was like this in the cave when the first divers found the team. The team was happy, but the divers had to go back underwater from them. A boy wanted to follow them, but of course he could not. They had to wait some more. Dark, hungry and little good fresh air, no one could tell them when they would be rescued, even if they could be. No one was sure they would make it out alive.
It wasn’t this bad in Texas for me, but it was that way when I was back in Rochester. However, I had that promise from God and was hopefully holding out.
During the most challenging times, depressing times, I would no longer resort to suicide. I knew I would go to hell for that. However, with the prospect of going to hell seemed likely in some cases, frequently I would resort to asking God to annihilate me. That would solve the eternal hell problem. These episodes would occur during the late part of my Texas stay and later when I moved away.
2016: Layoff
About four years into my employment with the group, a really high-up manager from Germany came and asked me to come with him one morning. We sat down in a small conference room and he took out some papers. He began to tell me that my position is going to be eliminated in about six months.
I should have seen it coming. Co-workers were leaving the group that I was in, and they were not being replaced. The other one who is in my group also gets the same meeting.
The group that I am in is being dissolved. The company did not want to invest more money. The lead customer’s chip was made (a successful and popular product today) and so was the initial money that they had paid for it. Without many other customers, the money was not there anymore. Germany was also heavily impacted.
I started looking for work but initially inside the company. Wanted to stay within the company as much as possible. I interviewed at one place, and it seemed to go well, but for one reason or another just did not work out. This would happen in every interview that I went there. There were at least a half-a-dozen.