Three years ago I was divorced from my wife, left my birth religion and quit my job. On top of all my issues I was suffering from burnout – I hadn't had a vacation in years. Since I was the religious guy at my job I worked the holidays and was promised make up time. Company policy shifted at some point and we were only allowed to accrue a certain number of days with no rollover – when I quit, I also lost 35+ "make up" vacation days.
I tried getting another job right away, but quit after a month – it was an easy job, but I had lost my ability to work around others. I managed to pick up steady contract work for about a year, but this didn't give me much of a breather.
I also found a girlfriend who kept me distracted from my problems, but that wasn't to last.
Winter is when my depression hits hard, and it kicked in during the second year I was dating this girl. Having zero experience with depressed people, she couldn't handle it and dumped me. That's when everything I had gone through prior caught up to me. Long story short – I got on medication and started therapy which helped a bit, but the suicidal thoughts and planning continued.
I don't remember exact time lines, but I think it was around 8 months ago that I decided to weigh the pros and cons of living by making a list. I decided not to off myself yet, and that instead I would try to focus on improving myself.
I am a homeschooled community college drop out. I grew up in a trailer and taught myself how to program when I was a child by making video games. I'm also a very creative person who writes, draws, composes music, etc. I started thinking about these things after making the suicide list, and realized that I had lost my way. I've never been one to care about money, but around a decade ago I was on welfare and living in the middle of nowhere. I managed to pull myself out of poverty by learning PHP and getting a job in Chicago. That was my salvation but also nearly my ruination. I had lost my creativity and life was all about work – I was making $96,000 a year at my full time job, plus keeping clients on the side.
In the last year I have been able to land another six figure job and multiple contracts with pretty big clients, but everything has consistently fallen through. I collapse a few months in, get panic attacks and feel suicidal again... so I had to take a different approach.
My current situation is this – I take on 3 to 6 month short term contracts, live on a shoestring budget (no cellphone, no car payment, nothing but the bare essentials), and then I self educate and work on personal projects for 3 to 4 months solid.
By doing this I have been able to learn 4 different game engines, 2 programming languages and finger pick on the guitar. Being raised as a homeschooled Jehovah's Witness left me with knowledge gaps, so I have also spent large amounts of time educating myself about science (genetics, biology, cosmology) and religion (I've read most of Dawkins, Hitchens and Sagan).
My goals have completely shifted over the last several months. For the first time in a very very long time I'm not thinking about suicide on a daily / weekly basis. I have put all of my creative energy into creating video games, and though I may never make a hit game or be a great musician or a scientist, these things are giving me exponentially more pleasure than working a full time job, spending 8 to 10 hours a day with people I don't love, playing office politics, supporting a platform I don't care about and just waiting for the weekend so I can sleep.