And so the push for the 7K miracle is still on. With any luck, Griffin and I will kick out another 2000 feet today. Upping the total to 4K in three days. Funny, next week is Griffin’s 2 year anniversary working for me. For those of you who don’t know, Griffin was my very first employee, less an employee and more a partner in crime really. He once did a guest blog about his first day working for me, you can read it here. A great deal has changed in those 2 years, back then we were certain that the authorities would burst in at any moment and cart us both off to jail for what we were doing. These days we are more worried about OSHA bursting in and demanding that we wear better shoes. To celebrate this momentous occasion, we are discussing a number of ideas. While my current favorite involves us both drinking a great deal of tequila and getting matching tattoos (I think I am beginning to have a bit of a tattoo fetish forming) we do have one very cool idea up our sleeves that you will probably enjoy, but more on that later.

In other news, I did get some very sad and disturbing news today.

A friend of a friend attempted suicide last night. While I had only met the person once, it came as a terrible blow. All those around the individual were all reeling from the news and in a general state of shock. My heart goes out to his friends and family right now as they deal with this nightmare. Now, I’m not about to write some trite post about how life is precious and how folks in such a place try to see the good things in life and seek out help. Nope, the guy had his reasons and those are between him and his god (or lack there of).

See, I once tried to kill myself too.

I’ll save you the details of why, but suffice to say that about 10 years ago I found myself with a loaded gun in my lap and unable to come up with a decent reason why I should not put the business end in my mouth. That is till I realized that it would be Tambo who would probably be the first person to find me. Taking a large caliber bullet to the face would leave more than just a mess; no it would leave a sickening gore show for whoever was the first on the scene. Now I didn’t really care about the effect it would have on my family (hell, in some ways I wanted to punish them and the gorier the better), but Tambo, Tambo had done nothing to deserve this and while I tried several times in vain to tell her that this was not her fault. There are just not enough words in the English language to craft a suicide note that would convince someone that it was not in some way their fault. Especially someone who loved you even when you could not seem to manage to love yourself.

No matter how bad my own shit might be, my wife did not deserve to have to clean her depressed husbands brains off the wall.

Eventually, I figured my shit out and made my peace with the universe. However, looking back I can’t help but sort of laugh and roll my eyes at how dire it all seemed at the time. How hopeless I felt in that moment and how for, in that dark moment, this seemed like the only way out and how utterly selfish and stupid it would have been.

I still own the gun. A silent, blue steel reminder, sits locked away in my safe.