Ask HN: What was the most stressful time in your life?

Second eviction by far.

LA is a horrible place to live , had I been 19 today I'd end up on the streets since housing is so much more expensive now. Stop thinking about what "society" will do to solve homelessness. Garcetti has no real ability, nor will , to fix LA. Leave while you still can. I had to estrange myself from my family , but hell. I went from 25k in credit card debt to 40k saved up. When I moved to Chicago my cost of living dropped by 30% , I had an amazing partner and for the first time in a good while felt hope. I can't express enough how horrible LA is.

Leave now !

My wife couldn't work because she had two young children with severe medical conditions, and she hasn't worked since then. I have a decent career, but it never paid well enough. The company didn't seem to mind that I was trying to support four people on my receiving salary.

It was hard for me; many sleepless nights are thinking about surviving with this low salary alone. I asked my boss for a raise; I was fired for requesting a raise. It was a dark time for me; I'll struggle if I must, just for the sake of my beloved family.

Working with a shitty business partner. An expensive (time wise) but worthy lesson.

Early in the job I am just about to leave (end of this week). Starting about 5 years ago.

It was an extremely fast-paced place and I really had no idea of the levels of workaholism I was signing up to be surrounded by. A company full of 26-year-old diehards and I was a decade older than everyone around me; ambitious (crazy) projects with super short deadlines to be done by 1-2 people; the list goes on.

I thought it was crazy, it made me feel crazy, it was crazy. One time I had to leave the office, walk to a liquor store, buy smokes and smoke one just to cope with the insanity of what I was doing in that moment (I'm not a smoker).

Eventually as the company matured, it grew the layers of bureaucracy that are now the defining feature of working there. It went from "holy shit how are we going to pull that off" to "holy shit I need 7 signoffs to change the wording on this button". Hard to say which is worse, actually. The money did make up for the craziness.

One job I had was in many ways an awesome place with great people and was financially extremely solid. Technically a bit boring but that was kinda ok.

What was not ok was the second founder of the company, who was a dictionary definition of "expert beginner", who was unable to accept other views except his own, and gleefully used his power to enforce his views. I ended up working against him in many places, initially with the full support of my team and manager, but then something flipped and I was going against him alone.

That's the only job where I regurarily woke up in the middle of the night to a work-related dream and could not fall asleep for the rest of the night. I used to take pride for being flexible and not lashing out at other people just because I was having a hard time. But everyone has a breaking point, so I became inflexible and lashed out at people.

I hated who I had become. I was eventually sort of fired from that place, and have worked in several good places since, but I will never forget that... that feeling of the tribe I used to trust turning against me.