Apart from interpersonal events (deaths, breakups, etc.), what's the biggest heartbreak you've experienced in your life?

Being medically disqualified for flight. I worked towards the goal of being a military aviator for over a decade, only to find out that my objective depth perception wasn't good enough. I almost went blind on two occasions before then, was one of the first in the country to get a new kind of corrective surgery to get to perfect vision, and never had issues with depth perception (could accurately determine distance out to about 6 miles, +/- about 50 yards, verified on radar). All of that, only to find out that because of the first event that almost blinded me as a child, my brain didn't develop objective depth perception the way it should have. The test where you're given a page and told to pick which circle pops out looks the same to me.

I honestly don't know if I would change anything that I did had I known sooner, because I did still get some positives from my time in the military (along with plenty of health issues), but it definitely would have given me pause.

• Being a school kid in class, all of us watching TV to see the first teacher go to space and seeing instead her death as the Space Shuttle challenger exploded.
• Being from Massachusetts, watching the Red Sox world series with my Grandfather in 1986 and seeing the ball go through Bill Buckner's legs.
• Not making the high-school basketball team as a freshman because I was too short. When I graduated I was 6 feet 2 inches.

When I was a kid, I was in band class. We were having an end of the year big concert and my parents were coming for once. I was first chair and had a fun part in one of our songs so I was really excited to get to play for them for once.

Because of my excitement and my being just a kid, I was bouncing around and the neck strap for my saxophone broke. I played tenor and there was no way my little hands could hold that thing up for a whole concert, so I was pretty much booted from the concert last minute. It broke my damn heart. Even thinking about it now makes me teary. All that hope just quashed because of some dumb mistake.

Good news is that the band director did me a solid and let me walk out with my case to rest my sax on beside my chair, but the damage had already been done.

The death of Anthony Bourdain shook me hard. I found him to be a very inspiring figure.

Watching my child cut themselves repeatedly for years because of undisclosed abuse from the man I was once married to.

I am probably overstating this a bit, and I am sure other stuff has hurt more at points, but I am still pretty upset about the Star Wars sequel trilogy. I had been waiting for them essentially since I was a kid in the early 90's, and I am annoyed that I allow them so much headspace. But it kind of ruined a lot of what should be an exciting time period for the franchise. They could have kept the same cast for TFA in the same roles more or less and just not done stupid/lazy/cynical/reductive movie and it would have been so much better.

JJ starting out by essentially wiping the table and trying to redo the OT basically fucked everything from the start. I am finding myself less and less interested in the current stuff as it tries to find a way to set that garage up and relatively explain it. I didn't take like the paperwork when they came out, and to be honest they are still kind of objectively bad, but they were additive and they felt like Star Wars, the new stuff is just lazy crap.

Having to leave my job as a caseworker for adults with severe mental illness. I would go to various Residential Care Facilities in my region, working on a specialized team for a very large mental health provider (one of the biggest).

Working thru the pandemic was hell, and the healthcare system has remained so much more strained than I've ever seen it.. My employer merged with another provider, absorbed financial issues, and started deterioratong as a company. Authentic leadership was gutted, management turned toxic, we were over-worked and exploited, and the HR/leadership were literally abusive. I dodged covid for a couple years with religious N95 use, but it eventually got me..

Not exaggerating at all.. in one day, visiting 3 RCFs in 2 different towns, I was exposed to a flu outbreak at one facility, covid at the next, and then finally an RSV outbreak at the ALF I visited last... That almost did me in. I feel almost recovered from most of the long-covid symptoms. Or at least they're more mild and easier to cope with.

But having to leave that job was so difficult... To have some people I'd worked with for years that are bonded to me, and that I genuinely care about was so hard... these people counted on me, and I felt like I was abandoning them.

I've also always tried to cultivate my self-identity and professional role to be helping others due to my own struggles with depression, and helping others has always selfishly helped my own self.

To lose not only all of these Clients who depended on me, but also my awesome team, the (good..) staff at various RCFs, all the public administrators throughout the state that act as court-appointed guardians for so many of my former Clients... I didn't just have to leave my job, but I lost all these relationships, consistent social interactions, and largely my sense of purpose (to help others) and role-identity (as a mental health professional).

It's been a big identity crisis on top of social crisis, on top physical health crisis. It's been the roughest period of my life, and while I know I'm close to rebuilding, I have such a pit of loss that needs to be filled, and eats at me. But regaining my physical health and lessening long-covid symptoms has been encouraging, and I know I'm close to being able to rebuild my role-identity and regain my sense of purpose. But it's been difficult going from self-actualization to being thrust into multiple identity crises.

One thing that has always given me strength and encouragement is remembering what an old professor drilled into us: "You can't have personal growth without struggle; without hardship." It's the hard things, the shit in life we have to fight thru, that preservence is what makes us a stronger, more capable person. I know coming out on the other side, I will be stronger, better-suited for future life challenges. I've gained experience and insight that will make more more equip to recognize the signs that I should've acknowledged before I got so overworked.

We can't grow as a person without struggling. Look at the difference between someone sheltered from the real world thrust into it as an adult, vs someone who had to face more of life's challenges earlier on. Anyway, this is already too long and I've probably overmedicated myself with my Volcano and this African Blueberry kush...

When after investing time on try learning something I realize that i am still inadequate and below standards. So the heartbreak to be less that a functional human.

As a fan of the Atlanta Falcons, Super Bowl LI.

Other than that, it would've been my marching band experience my senior year of high school. We had our worst competition performances that year and there was no band trip like in previous years. Not a great way to go out.

Several. I'll keep it to three.

One, was having to move out from my home state, twice. I have my fair share of criticism for some parts of it that I didn't like, like having been around some lowly leveled towns with druggies and drunks. But there have been an awful lot of ups as well, I love it's scenery, I love how it isn't billboard haven like the places I've moved to have had and I liked the small communities. As well as my state being a very progressive state too. If only it'd correct it's affordability problem, I would have loved to return there.

Two, the changing of the internet. I've been online for over 27 years now. It is depressing to watch it all devolve into a corporate marketing playground with so many subscriptions nagging you. I've had to watch so many good places shut down because of these increasing pressures of these changes affecting them. People I've known online, are either gone due to the sands of time or that they've passed away that I didn't realize until I get second or third hand information about it. It used to all be a rich and fulfilling experience. But every time I use the internet now, it feels shallower and shallower. If the internet were to suddenly up and vanish in maybe the next 5 minutes, I wouldn't complain. I'd just bow out and feel that we've done all that we've done.

Lastly, having to oust a friend of 5 years tenure for showing sympathy to pedophiles. They brought a lot of positivity and wholesomeness to my life during my time with them. We were even in a group with others that shared silliness and good times. But the past year it has been nothing but just senseless debates and one of which ended up them coming out as a pedo sympathizer which was something I just couldn't accept because of my experiences having been entangled with pedos and dealing with them and their illogical worldview on how they see minors.

The day I found out they no longer make or sell Big Ed's Super Saucers. I miss those fuckin' things so much... 😭

Sounds really silly, but: My team not winning the league last season. On the last match day. We just had to win one game. But we played 2:2. In the end, it was 71 points for both teams. But Bayern had the better goal difference (+54 vs. +39 for us).

That one stung for a few weeks. Not because Bayern won the league (we are used to that), but because of the way we didn't win. Would've been the first time for us to win the league since 2012.

There might but other things. But this was the first thing that came to my mind, because it was very recent.

Death of Chester Bennington, ending of Adventure Time series, slowly forgetting my childhood.

A few years ago I was trying to get into building my own small systems. I had successfully created a NAS and a Pi-hole (not exactly rocket science) and my next project was going to be a Hackintosh. I bought a $500 Chinese NUC (Lattepanda) and somehow managed to install Catalina on it and managed to run it (which was crazy to me since it had required some iffy config that I didn't think I'd be able to get down). I then went through the trouble of building this thing into a suitcase so that it was a "laptop", though decidedly bare bones. The next time I powered it up, it promptly burned through something, powered off, and I now had a ~$800 suitcase brick.

That one slapped me down so hard from my techy fantasies that I put away my tools and never touched another project again. My NAS & Pi-hole also stopped working after a few months, and I decided that that was enough of a sign from the universe that I wasn't meant to be wasting my time, money and effort on something I was decidedly not intelligent or strong-willed enough to see to fruition.

I was also hoping to make it my "out" of support work which I've been doing for almost two decades. But with that project died my dreams of being able to rise above my own limitations as well, since I've repeatedly proven to myself that whenever I try my hardest at something, I'll simply still fail eventually.