I was nearing the mark of my third decade of being alive. Many things were getting better. I liked my work. I liked the team and the projects. I was nearing the last payments of my student loans. Since my graduation, six years before, my expenses had almost been split into three items. Rent, student loan and income taxes. Nearly a third of my income each. Even though I had a high salary, I had almost no disposable income. I had chosen to study in France instead of the USA because the cost of a full year at Epitech was half of a full year in a state university in the USA. I was able to and had taken a loan to finance my future. It was starting to finally pay off.

There was a second significant change that was happening. I was learning to accept being single. For many years it had been a burden but eventually, with the help of friends, the internet and my therapist, I understood that to share my life with someone, I first had to share it with myself. I had to enjoy doing things by myself. This was also prompted by the continuing of friends leaving Paris and having less people to easily hang out with.

This manifested in several ways. I started to go to museums and expositions by myself. After going to many concerts by myself, I eventually imitated a dear friend. She systematically bought two tickets for a concert when it was announced. At the last minute she would find someone to go with her. I think I attended almost every single opera and ballet of the 2016/2017 and 2017/2018 season. I have very strong memories of being completely awe struck by some of the representations.

I stopped feeling guilty of playing video games all day during the weekend. I started to push more into the demoscene as well. Running the demos on my computer, watching them again and again. As well as slowly trying to pick up the basics on how to program a demo myself.

I read more and more, science fiction, “regular” literature, as well as picking up books on the history of the space race.

As many other geeks at the time, I watched live rocket liftoffs. Not only the SpaceX ones, but every single one I could grab. Ariane5, Soyouz, Proton, Orbital and others. Even though I really enjoyed my job, I looked into switching to work in the space industry. But either the work conditions were atrocious at the famous ones or I didn’t think I had the skills needed to join them. I inferred that from the job ads but who knows, I might have made it had I tried.

In the end, the biggest blocker was neither of these things. I required medical help and medicine for the rest of my life. Even though health insurance in the USA had been forbidden to deny coverage because of a preexisting condition thanks to the affordable healthcare act. At the time there were a lot of talks to dismantle it. I could not take the risk of potentially being denied life saving treatment or even being refused to be insured by the health insurances. That closed the road completely for me. There were very few opportunities in Europe, so it just fizzled out.

I felt confident. But that was not long lasting. My next assignment brought back doubts on my abilities.

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(1) Many of the pictures for next episodes come from this wonderful thread about DC5 : https://lafibre.info/opcore/dc5/​

If you have missed it, you can read the previous episode here​

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To pair with :

• Above and Beyond Essential Mix 2004
• La horde du contrevent (Not translated to English) by Alain Damasio