When I was 17, I convinced my parents to take in a friend who was severely traumatized (which is the part they didn't know and I underestimated) and about to be homeless. I spent pretty much all of two years or so just managing her day to day, protecting her from herself, holding her as she relived moments of her past in waking nightmares, etc... while hiding the extent of her damage from my parents and exiting high school/entering college both as gracefully as I could. These were crucial years where I lost a ton of opportunity. Before this gets questioned at all, I'm just going to say that I'm sworn to secrecy on many details on this subject, and I am absolutely under no delusions that everything I did was the smartest or most responsible way I could have done things. At the same time, I'm proud of myself for pulling us both through that period and if I had done things significantly differently, I probably wouldn't have a positive opinion of myself today.
The next couple years were pretty decent, and I made a lot of progress with my life. Then, when I was 21, we had a kid. Need I really say anymore? Well, I will.
I got a job at Fedex Express as a checker. I scanned packages and loaded them into giant containers (like a real life game of tetris) to be put on planes. I actually really enjoyed it. The environment was mostly friendly, I was lucky enough to get managers who valued and looked out for me, and I loved the opportunity to keep in shape and physical labor generally helps me feel alive. Unfortunately/fortunately it was part-time. It allowed me enough time to put forth serious learning efforts in school, but it just wasn't enough pay to support my family as my kid got older, my wife and I grew more adult, and support from my family decreased.
Then I heard an opportunity from a friend of my brother who had just been hired by another branch of the company that was still looking for tons of people for full-time entry level positions doing basically data entry (there's a lot more technical baggage and responsibility than typical data entry, but that is functionally what it is). The work was supposedly super easy, and the transfer would be seamless and allow me to keep all my tenure, increase my benefits, and get full-time pay that we could actually live off of.
Biggest fucking mistake of my life.
It took about 3 months for me to start realizing how wrong the job was for me, and how much of a struggle it was going to be for me to stay there very long. At that point, we were already dependent on it. But I only had a couple years of school left, and thought that I could stick it out until after a graduated and got a real job. I learned very very little in school from that point forward and barely scraped by doing only what was necessary to get good grades.
About two years before I graduated, my wife got accepted into college and started taking classes. About a year and a half before I graduated, my wife and I also discussed and agreed on the value of a sibling for our first kid. We knew it would be tough, but that we couldn't make excuses for not doing what was right for a healthy family and that we couldn't put it off any longer or else our two kids would be too far apart in age to meaningfully grow up together. So we started trying. About 10 or 11 months before I graduated, we decided that if she got pregnant at that point, the kid would be due too close to my graduation date and decided that there was too much risk there to continue. About 9 months before my graduation, she got pregnant.....
My final semester in college I had a very ambitious capstone project that I'd been putting deep thought into for a couple years. My wife's pregnancy was also a nightmare. She was constantly weak and ill and we ended up taking a few emergency trips to the hospital. Through all of this, she was determined to continue taking classes. I honestly don't know how I succeeded that semester, but I did. My capstone was a great success. My second kid was born 4 days after I finished and presented it.
After graduating, I quickly became frustrated with my difficulties finding a job, as the economy was just beginning to fail. In the meantime, I was growing more and more keenly aware of how my workplace was mentally deteriorating me... changing me in ways I really didn't like... especially without the regular external influence of classes challenging me and keeping me focused. Plus the added stress of a newborn. Only a few months after graduation, my first kid was diagnosed Type 1 diabetic. That set me back a ton. It took a couple months to really get his condition incorporated into our lives to the point that we could really start doing anything other than existing day to day and trying to make things work. His condition still presents a major obstacle to a lot of things you'd never realize, even though we're pretty much used to it by now.
After that had somewhat settled and I felt ready, I announced to my friends and family that I was giving up gaming until I found a better job. Two weeks later, I got the second MRSA infection of my life (serious business, in case you're unaware), which doctors blamed on stress and offered to prescribe me anti-depressants. I refused the drugs, but it got me to evaluating my own limits. I especially thought a lot about my grandfather on my dad's side, who I am named after and never met because he literally worked himself to death in his mid-30's. Not long after my MRSA infection, my dad suffered a minor stroke at only 46.
So since then, I've been scared to death of working myself too hard. My workplace continues to grate on me, and it's been putting pressure on my already difficult marriage. My first son has also started school, which has effected my schedule in ways that piles on extra sleep deprivation. I work from 4 pm to 1 am. I get up at 2 pm, get ready, and go to work. After I get home, I typically pay attention to my family for a couple hours before I get real time to myself that I can do something with. At that point, it's anywhere from 3-5 am, and I start getting seriously tired around 6 am... but I stay up until 8 am to get my kid on the bus in the morning, which puts me at an average of 6 hours of sleep a night.
I really don't have much to give toward finding a better job these days (I'm a 3d artist, btw). I still try. I have a couple modest indy game projects that I'm just starting up with friends that are looking like they might actually happen... but mostly I just try to maintain enough health of mind and body to keep operating day to day. I could try to find another job with a better schedule that might not be as horrible for me, but there is nothing else out there at entry level that offers the benefits (which is really really important when you have a family) and I would have to give up a tenure that gives me almost guaranteed job security (I have 2nd best tenure on my shift behind my manager) and that's incredibly important in today's job market, especially when I have a kid who is extra dependent on stability.
Everything about modern life feels like a trap to me, and it shouldn't be this way.