Really need some advice

[Mr4213]

I would really love some advice/tips and just to vent on this. Many people don't like to discuss failures. But I do and will. I understand that failure is natural and it's how we learn about ourselves and from our mistakes. It's how we improve. As an entrepreneur I believe you're going to fail multiple times before you get to where you want to be.


Before I say this first part. Please don't perceive this as me being arrogant or anything like that. I just want to give some context.


I started a successful LLC when I was 19. I'm not saying I was crazy successful by any means. I've never been close to being a millionaire.


But I was successful enough to make a lot of money for a 19 year old in a short time. For example I made about $7,000 in around six hours once. I had some employees and I was able to do whatever I wanted with my time. I made decent money and I set my own schedules. I met with customers, I made deals with people. At 19 I had grown men (between 30 and 40) doing what I said.


Well, it didn't take too long, my business ended up failing under my leadership. External influences out of my control did play a factor. But the majority of it is my fault and I understand that. I did a lot of things right. But I did too many things wrong. I learned a lot of things about myself through these failures. I've improved in many areas of my life, and continue to work at improving, because of these past failures. I've come to genuinely understand the saying that "You must first master yourself, before you can master anything"


Immediately after my business failure I ended up doing a significant time of active duty. I went to Europe for a time and did an extra few months of active on the state side.


Once again, through my own personality faults I screwed myself. I have ADHD and I also grew up extremely poor. I was raised far below the poverty line in an abusive/neglectful home. These factors have carried into adulthood and have resulted in me self sabotaging myself. I should have saved all of that money I made while on active duty. I'd be in a much better place now had I been more financially responsible. But I did not, and ended up blowing it all. I did a lot of irresponsible things that just hurt me in the long run and ultimately wasted the brief and valuable time I have on earth.


As a result, instead of controlling the direction of my life, I let life control me.


Now? I'm forced to live with family members who I love to death, but are addicted to drugs and toxic. Most of my friends from childhood are addicted to drugs and already have a criminal record. My entire immediate family has a criminal record. I am the only one in my family that has never been arrested. I've never even had a speeding ticket. Everyone around me has thrown their lives away and is just sinking. It's incredibly difficult to fight the environment off and not let it take me down as well.


Regardless, I've been able to look at the situation and I know I don't F*cking want that for myself. I don't want to live a mediocre life just living day to day trying to survive and pay bills. I don't want my kids to cry themselves to sleep at night asking God what they did wrong. Like I did. I want my kids to have a father and mother that don't do drugs. I don't want my kids to see their mother doing crack every night right in front of them like I did. Believe me, it's so F*cking difficult to watch everyone around you sink. Knowing my siblings were born into a life that statistically meant they were virtually guaranteed to fail and become drug addicts.


Just to give you an idea of how f*cked up things are. I got a call weeks ago telling me my own mother has been missing for months. She went out doing drugs and never came back to the place she was living at. I don't even care enough about her to make a 5 minute call to see if she's even alive. I know most people would look at that and think that it's really abnormal and dysfunctional. I realize it is. But it's the reality I was born into and I legitimately do not care.


I have no family support system. No money. Behind on bills. No health or dental insurance. My car insurance rate is astronomical. Not because I'm a bad driver or because I have some kind of record. I literally have nothing on my record at all. Nothing. It's because no one ever taught me to drive a car when I was 16. I was far too poor to afford a car at 16. My family didn't care about teaching me to drive, and they were far too poor to get me a car regardless.


It wasn't until right after I turned 19 years old and had saved up money for 6 months that I was able to get a car and illegally teach myself to drive so I could get a license. I paid with cash for a cheap little car. And then what? The car broke down after like two months because the dealer knowingly sold it to me with a blown head gasket. The repair was worth more than the car.


This was long before I had ever done anything with entrepreneurship. I was working a shitty job at that very exact time and had to finance a new car. The fact that my car was now financed plus my short driving history (on my own plan) means that my rates are more than the monthly cost that most young adults pay for housing.


I'm surrounded by drugs. It's just me looking out for myself trying to escape the environment that has tried to drag me down since the day I was born. When I see my family doing drugs every night I desperately want to give in and just get high with them.


They ask me to do it with them. I want to forget my problems. To avoid reality. To just give in and let it take me down. But I know that is the easy way out. It's sooooo easy. To just give in and avoid the hard path in life. To just pretend everything is okay. I know if I give into everything it'll swallow me and I'll turn out just like them.


Living a life of depression and anxiety. A life of accomplishing nothing at all. Addicted to drugs and hating myself. A life of just trying to get enough money to survive day to day. A life of debt. A life of crime. Always worried when I see police. Bouncing from odd job to odd job. Neglecting my future kids. Divorced multiple times. Letting my health decline and giving no F*cks about it. A life of always wearing the same nasty dirty clothes every day. A life of homelessness. A life with so much potential, but wasted and thrown away like it never mattered at all.


It repulses me. In a way, my own family repulses me. So far I've been successful at avoiding the drugs and toxic environment. I've been working hard every day to dig myself out of the hole I'm in. I'm gone all day being productive while they sit home all day doing drugs.


I understand that I need to get a solid foundation and save some money before I can start pursuing my entrepreneurial dreams again. So I got a job and I'm about to start a semester of community college. I've been doing my best to live a "normal life" and do normal things until I can figure things out.


But honestly, it's F*cking killed me inside. I got an entry level job at Walmart making $9.00 an hour because I need money that bad. Even when I worked for companies long ago I still made more than this. My active military pay is almost like double this and the benefits are way better.


Today was only my second day. I haven't even made it through orientation yet. Not to sound overly dramatic or anything. But when I'm clocked in at that store I feel like I just want to kill myself. I sat 8 hours today watching their videos on how to be a "good employee" and the entire time I just wanted to bash my head against the wall until I died.


I'm good an concealing my feelings to them. I'm always 10 minutes early to everything. I'm clean shaven, friendly and professional. I'm enthusiastic and ambitious. I'm overly qualified for a position that I'm barely getting paid for. I never told them about my past business projects. But even when that's excluded. I've got multiple medical certifications and leadership experience through the military alone. Overall, I'm an employee people would love to have. They really like me.


But I got so upset today. I was forced to watch orientation videos for 8 hours. For a split second I had the thought of throwing the computer monitor at the wall and walking out. I haven't even worked there 15 hours total yet. My time is worth more than some F*cking video teaching me the "proper way to mop a floor" or telling me how "valued I am at the company and if I work my a$$ off for 6 months I can get a dollar raise"


Wow!? All have to do is be your bitch and give you the majority of my daily time and I can get a dollar raise after 6 months? Where the F*ck do I sign up?


Believe me, I mean no disrespect to this company or the employees there. Many of them are just nice hard working people. I'm not special. I don't think myself better than them. I don't think myself above them by any means. It's not even the shitty pay that really bothers me. Shit I'm more than happy to work for free depending on the circumstances.


It's the fact that deep inside I know this is not who I am. At my very core I'm an entrepreneur and I'm not some brainwashed employee that buys into all the bullshit. It's like they worship Sam Walton over there man. They have pictures and quotes of the man everywhere. They make you watch videos of him. I respect the man and admire what he accomplished from a business perspective. I could learn a lot of things from him. He founded a multinational billion dollar company. But at the end of the day. I don't aspire to worship a Sam Walton. I aspire to F*cking be a Sam Walton. I want to be a producer. Not a consumer. I'd rather create a company that competes with Walmart than "work hard and if I'm lucky I could be a CEO one day"


On top of that...I'm starting a semester of college and I really hate that too. I hate the entire idea of it all. I don't want to earn some degree so I can get some job being someone else's bitch after 4 years. I don't want to compete for some shitty job paying me shitty wages and taking all of my time.


In my personal opinion. Life is about far more than that. I honest to God can't understand how people can be content with that lifestyle. Wouldn't they rather be spending time with their family? Wouldn't they rather be using their time how they want? Don't they understand that their time on earth is worth far more than some shitty wages at a company making other people rich? Most people hate working. It's like they lie to themselves about it so they can forget how much they hate it. I'm sorry but I can't trick myself into thinking that's what I want for myself.


But I understand that I need to focus on the process and not the event I want. I'm not where I'm at because I want to be here or because I love it. I'm here because it's apart of the process and I just need to go through it at this point of my life.


It's so hard though. I hate every second I'm there. All I think about is leaving and I just started. I hate people controlling my time and telling me when I'm allowed to take breaks or use the bathroom. I hate asking for permission to take time off so I can go to a F*cking doctors appointment. I understand that I need to make the best of this time and just work on progressing everyday and finding value from this. I'm constantly looking for opportunity and how I can provide value somehow. But it feels like I have to kill apart of myself in order to do this.


Once again, not to sound over dramatic. But I just kept thinking of ways to kill myself because at the time it felt like I'd rather be dead than do that shit. I feel like everyday I go to work I'm going to have to kill apart of myself and be depressed for the sake of getting it done. Every fiber of my being hates everything about it and I'm disappointed with myself for making he decisions that put me here after I'd worked hard to get out of it in the first place.


If you guys have managed to read all of this I really appreciate you taking the time to do that. So my question is this. Do you guys have tips or advice? Am I doing the right thing by forcing myself to do this? Do you have any tips for coping with this? Any advice for making the best of out my situation?

 

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[EricFromCanada]

Man, I wish I could offer you some really good piece of advice, but to be honest, I'm still young, and there's a lot I don't know.
Here's my best shot:
What do you want to get out of life? What's helped me deal with bad situations, is writing down my goals and thinking through how I'm working to achieve them. Although you're going through a lot of shit right now, just realize how much stronger you will come out on the other side. Just hearing your story, I can tell you don't go down easy, and you're really driven. Like you said, you built up a company at the age of 19 to a large enough size where you had employees twice your age working for you. That's really impressive. You're still young and have a lot of time left in your life to push yourself, and build something great. If you haven't already, I recommend you read MJ's personal story in his book TMF as he went through a similar situation, and was able to push through. Let me know if there's anything else I can do to help you out, and just remember how far you have come, and are how far you are going to go.

 

[KeepGoin]

2 things.

First, life isn't fair. Your situation is proof of that. But despite all of that shit, you're looking for better. I understand your venting, anger, and internal combustion. My home life wasn't ideal either. There's a successful forum member on here who also had a shitty home life, SteveO. Elon musk got beat into a coma as a kid. But these people searched for better like you are and found it.

Number two. They found it by taking action. For Steve that meant working a low level job, for Elon that meant learning to code. For you, it sounds like your environment is suffocating. Keep in mind, everything can seem endless. It can feel like the walls are closing in around you. Everyone has it better, right? Your mind gets stuck in a cycle of bullshit. Just remember, none of that is rational. That's your inner monologue playing the victim. Because it's easy and comfortable to be a victim.

You'll preserve, align your actions with your internal fire. It sounds like it hurts bad enough for you. Spend your time taking action and failing again if that's what it takes. Just keep moving forward.

 

[dior616]

It seems you already know the answer to most of your problems which means you have a pretty good head on your shoulders.. But look at each problem specifically.

Your environment - It sounds like a toxic hell. How can you detach yourself and let family go? Figure out how you'll have to move out on your own ASAP. This also may not be PC but maybe become a 'colder' person.

Jobs - If you can, work as a delivery driver or waiter(easily make minimum $70 a day). Some jobs make pay a little more than $9 like some warehourse-type jobs.

College - Not sure what you're studying at community college for 4 years, I hope it's something 'useful'. But if you're taking out loans...wtf are you doing? Don't dig yourself a deeper hole.

You have the fire and pain to push yourself forward which is more than enough. Just screw your head back on and DON'T let yourself go.

 

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[rollerskates]

Kudos to you for wanting out of what you grew up in, but you're still there. Is it all possible to rent a room from someone while you're getting on your feet? I think your immediate physical surroundings are dragging you down more than you think and your priority should be to get out of there. I know you don't want to be at Walmart (who does?!), but, think of it as time served to serve your immediate goals--not being in a horrible situation. If you don't want to go to college, DON'T. Can you carry a notebook with you? Are you allowed to "take notes" during your training videos? Keep a notebook with you at all times, and write ideas/goals/ things to motivate you. It's what saved me during years of working for the government.

You can also think of it as a game--how helpful can you be, be the best damn employee ever. You never know when a customer you help will turn out to be a good contact/mentor/otherwise spectacular thing in your life. Don't help customers with this in mind, though, but it doesn't hurt to be memorable in a positive way.

You also get an employee discount, and if it's possible (not sure if it is), can you pick up clearance merch there and flip it on eBay or Craigslist? Like I said, I'm not sure if it would be possible, but if you could, it would help put a few more dollars in your pocket.

And lastly, why not turn your failure into an ebook of what not to do and sell it on amazon? You can make it a short 99 cent book. Who knows, it may be more successful than you'd imagine.

 

[SteveO]

Your post screams victimhood all the way down to the end. None of that defines you as a person unless you choose it to be so. Look at what YOU want in life and let the noise go.

 

[SpartanWarrior77]

If you guys have managed to read all of this I really appreciate you taking the time to do that. So my question is this. Do you guys have tips or advice? Am I doing the right thing by forcing myself to do this? Do you have any tips for coping with this? Any advice for making the best of out my situation?

Right now, there are thousands of people wrongly imprisoned.

There are young children being raped and sold across sex-slave networks.

There are innocent people being tortured and beheaded.

This is all happening right now.

My point? Life isn't fair.

I was blessed in many ways. My parents have always provided food, a roof over my head, and pushed me to aim for higher things in life. Im healthy, fit, and strong. But in other ways, I wasn't so blessed off the bat: childhood abuse that left me warped for a long time until I climbed out of it. Growing up without a father or anyone really there for me as a positive and strong role model, etc.

The only fundamental law in the universe is that of mathematics. 1 + 1 will always equal 2.

There is no law for fairness.

Use mathematics and embrace reality. You want to be an entrepreneur? Envision your desire and move towards it. That's it. One step at a time. One inch at a time. One minute at a time.

If you keep moving forward and accept reality for what it is doing everything in your power to create & not react, you will achieve your dreams. And when you do, you'll be that much more grateful for them. You WILL be so much more grateful because you will know where you came from.

Hope that helps

 

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[Mr4213]

I appreciate everyone who has taken the time to respond to this. I apologize that my response has taken so long.

Ironically, not long after I originally had started this post. I received a call one night saying my Grandmother was in the hospital and that it was serious. I immediately grabbed all of my things and spent the last money I had to drive to her city.

I had thought she would be okay and that I would end up taking care of her at her home. But sadly not. I showed up and what I saw broke my heart. She was connected to all kinds of machines. She was on Fentanyl. She was intubated and couldn't even communicate with me. At best she could barely use her fingers to write scribbly lines on a paper that I couldn't even understand.

After her second surgery I was told that she was going to die by the surgeon. She had a blood clot that killed all of her intestines. I spent the next few weeks watching her worsen everyday until she passed on Christmas day.

My parents were drug addicts. If it wasn't for her I probably wouldn't even be alive today. I regarded her as my mother and she was literally all I had.

She was never able to retire due to her six figure debts. A substantial portion of the debt she had, was because she decided to step in and help my brother and I while we were growing up. She was having to work 40 hours a week in her 80's at a job she hated going to everyday. My dream in life was to make enough money at a young age so I could pay her debts off and she could retire. But now that will never be the case.

Now that she has passed. The banks are going to foreclose on the house and take everything. She had left me a life insurance policy that might've been enough to save the house. But it lapsed literally a month before she died. I'm living in an empty house all alone waiting for the state to evict me and make me homeless.

This whole situation that caused me to move here has made my financial situation even worse. I'm unemployed and I literally have no money and I'm about two months behind on my bills. I can't even afford a package of ramen noodles nor could I even afford the gas to get to the store to buy ramen noodles if I could afford them. I've been rationing the little amount of food my Grandmother bought years ago. I eat one can of beans and one package of oatmeal a day and I get all of my water from the sink. I'm starving all day.

Watching my Grandmother's home, the home that was the only stable place I ever had in my life, be destroyed and taken away by creditors has killed me inside and I have not been able to accept it. It has consumed my thoughts.

Theres no way in hell I could afford an attorney. Even thinking about that makes me laugh really hard. Because I can't afford an attorney, I stayed up for almost three days straight without sleep reading the entire Estates Code of my state trying to find some way I could miraculously save the house.

I don't see one. The estate does not qualify for any exemptions or legal protections. I have not read about federal laws yet so I'll probably do that soon too. Even if I could somehow save the house or get some kind of deal going with someone. My Grandmother never created an actual will. She wrote a 2 sentence will on a piece of paper at the hospital right before she went into surgery. She always loved my dad and saw the best in him regardless of anything he did. She drove herself into a lot of debt trying to take care of him for his entire life. She named him the sole beneficiary of everything.

She didn't know he hasn't even filed taxes in probably 25 years or more. I've checked out his background and he has so many liens against him, including federal. He owes money to so many institutions that he just ignored. He has extensive criminal histories in multiple states. I can't even find out the entire extent of it because its so much. He hasn't even been legally allowed to drive a vehicle since I've been alive. He's on probation right now for a recent drug charge which also happened while he was illegally driving.

If I somehow found a way to save the house. I'd be saving it from my Grandmothers creditors so my dad can gain possession and automatically place new liens on it.

My only option would be to find some miraculous way to save the house from creditors and then also go to court with my dad to contest the "will" and try to gain possession for myself.
regardless of my feelings towards my dad, I don't want to take my own father to court. Even if I wanted to I couldn't afford the cost associated with the court system.

People keep telling me to just accept it and let it go. They keep saying theres nothing I can do. I know they're probably right, but I just can't let it go. I know its just wasting all of my time and energy. But I keep thinking theres someway. Instead of focusing my energies in areas that are probably more beneficial to my success. I've been staying up for days at a time with no sleep reading laws and trying to find ways to save it.

College is not an option for me either. My parents don't file taxes so I'm disqualified from financial aid. Even if I had a desire to take out loans for school. I'm also disqualified from that because the school won't authorize loans without parental information.

I asked them what my options are and they told me I have to pay out of pocket. Then they told me they made a mistake and my military exemption in regards to college assessment tests is now invalid. They're requiring me to take a college readiness exam that cost $23 and I told them I can't even afford that. They won't even exempt the cost of the test for me. I can't register for classes until I take it. Not to mention the fact that I don't want to be in college in the first place

Believe me, I know life isn't fair. My own mother abandoned me at a crack house when I was a little kid. She used to prostitute herself out in front of me when I was a little boy. I've seen and been subject to a lot of f*cked up things. I've been homeless multiple times in my life, in elementary, in jr high, in high school and I'll probably be homeless again soon. I've been experiencing how life isn't fair my entire life since the day I was born. I get it, I don't expect special treatment. I'm not special and no one is. I understand you have to be a F*cking man and get shit done for yourself because thats just the reality of life. You either make things happen or you let life crush you.

But I mean damn man, theres only so much you can hit one person with. I'm only 21, can a mother F*cker get a break? It's just F*cking overkill at this point. I'm not religious, but I'm convinced that if a God exist he has been gunning for my a$$ a very long time and I don't know what I did to cause it.

The worst part is my Grandmother is gone and she was the center of my universe. I would have done anything for her. I started my first business because I wanted to save her. She's the one that bought me my first business book which led to me pursuing entrepreneurship to begin with. I would've got into crime a long time ago had it not been for her. I was young and angry at the system I saw. I was angry that I didn't have hot water, or even water at some points. I was angry when other kids would call me trailer trash because of the clothes I wore to school. I was angry that my parents wouldn't even enroll me into school until CPS got called but then other kids have parents that actually enrolled them in school and took an interest in their education. I had no money and I wanted to eat at night like every other kid. I knew I could've made a lot of money breaking the law. If it wasn't for her I probably would've done it. I'd probably already have had multiple run ins with law enforcement. But instead I have a clean record and a military background because of her.

I'm just in a deep slump right now. But I know I'm going to bounce back and I know I will become a great entrepreneur. I'm too F*cking pissed off at the problems I see in society to ever quit. Statistically speaking, due to the circumstances I was born into, its virtually guaranteed that my life amount to nothing at all. You can look at certain factors before a child is even born and mathematically prove which ones are probably going to end up in a prison. That's what makes me so angry. Before you're even born, the hand that you are dealt already decides what you're going to be and it makes it almost impossible to be anything else but that.

Its all a cycle, drug addict parents produce drug addict kids. Poverty produces poverty which produces poverty. Kids who escape the cycle of poverty are the exception, not the rule. I've read the studies and I've even seen it firsthand. All of my friends and family have had problems with the law, drugs and poverty. All of those things are interconnected. My best friend comes from a similar background as me and he became a felon at 19. He was born with high odds of a life in poverty, which is why he become a felon, and now that he is a felon his odds are even higher and his ability to escape poverty decreases even more until eventually its impossible. His brother also has similar problems. So does my bother. As I look around at everyone I know I keep seeing the same cycle. I can't help but wonder how much better we all would've turned out had we not been given a set of circumstances that statistically guarantee we don't succeed. How successful would I have been had I not been born into a environment thats been conditioning me to fail from the day I was born.

Middle and upper class populations generally don't give a F*ck and I don't blame them because why should they. Everyone has their own shit going on and they take care of it themselves, why should they spend their time fixing other people's problems when they have their own problems going on. It's poor peoples fault they are in that situation and its their responsibility, its not our responsibility to fix their mistakes. I get it and I share a lot of the same views, hell I'm a person who would justly receive government handouts but even I myself do not like them and have never pursued them. But even so, when I read the studies on how our system consciously and unconsciously makes sure that people in poverty stay in poverty, it makes me sick. All I need to do is look at the education system or the prison system for example. I've never been pulled over once or had a ticket until recently when I was living with my dad in a poor area that had a high drug rate. I've never been pulled over before, but I got stopped three times in less than a week because I lived in a poverty stricken area which is going to naturally have more drugs in it as the two are interconnected.

The third time it happened was because a cop illegally stopped me right outside of my driveway simply because he wanted to fish for felonies. My registration was out because I couldn't afford my astronomically high insurance payments that were the result of me having to be on my own plan and also not being able to afford a car and get a license until the age of 19. Granted I was in fowl of the law and if he had stopped me for that expired registration I would've understood that he's just doing his job. But he didn't know about those two things before he stopped me. He didn't even tell me why he had stopped me and I asked him because I knew he didn't have a good one and I was right, it was bullshit. Shortly after, for no reason whatsoever, two more cops arrived and I had three cops around my car in an effort to unnerve me. That alone is totally unprecedented, I am friends with a lot of cops that I serve with in the military and I've even asked their opinions on the matter. I'm sure they assumed I had drugs and wanted to scare me, but because I did not have drugs I was naturally not the least bit worried about it and it didn't phase me. I was only worried about legally getting my car towd after I got stopped illegally. After he saw I was a chill dude, I had a clean record, no drugs and was also in the reserves he let me off with just a fix it ticket for the registration and told me if he sees me again he'll tow my car. I ended up getting the ticket dismissed, but not before it cost me a little over $600 to renew my insurance and registration.

None of my other bills were able to be paid because of that and I can't afford that $430 insurance payment this month which will soon be $860 plus the other $663 car payment I'm behind on and my other bills. It'll probably be cancelled again subjecting me to the same potential situation only next time it would be worse. Shit I might even get my car taken away from my bank. The cop was really cool and I'm thankful for him not towing my car and not giving me a ticket for the insurance. But still I know his stop was illegal and only happened because I was in a poor area because I was born poor and thats where I'm forced to live at. In the nice middle class neighborhood my Grandmother lives in I've never even seen a cop before, since the age of 7. Let alone one hiding right outside my driveway waiting to pull me over just to see what I was doing. I had a lot of good things going for me when I was stopped, I don't think most people in that area are as lucky as me. His stop was illegal and if he had towd my car it would've taken months or possibly years for me to recover from that, making it even harder for me to escape. I wouldn't even have been able to see my dying Grandmother. Not to mention the fact that I'd also be making payments on a vehicle thats not even in my possession which would make it even more difficult for me.

I'm not going to let the system and the circumstances I was given force me and my future kids to live in poverty. I absolutely hate watching all the people I love be dragged down to repeat a cycle they don't even consciously understand they are repeating. I know only I can control the direction I want my life to go and I'm going to break the cycle. I'm going to be a very successful entrepreneur one day and then I'm going to help kids from troubled backgrounds. They weren't given a fair hand and life isn't fair. But at least I'd be able to make it a little more fair for a few kids somewhere.

I know this post served no real business value to anyone, it's largely a rant. I understand this post screams victimhood. But I am not trying to act like a victim and I am not a victim. I have no expectation that anyone is actually going to spend time to read this post. I just needed to get some things off my mind.

 

[mrarcher]

Your story sounds very very familiar. Keep at it, keep working hard and maybe move away if you have to. It' hard not to feel like a victim sometimes. I get it. It's amazing how you think you are strong but sometimes you can be brought to tears.

Read the poem invictus by William earnest Henley. It' about being strong in the face of adversity.

Good luck, and feel free to pm if you need to.