Kicou

“I don't get it, you could make $200k a year if you put some effort into it”

Well, perhaps we have different priorities in life and do not define success in the same manner.

Maybe we need a little bit of personal history here:

• I was abused from age 5 to 15+
• the abuse was constant, it was mostly physical and psychological
• I also suffered abuse of sexual nature, but the way it happened was not systemic and was perpetrated by a different abuser —somehow it did not cause as much trauma
• I was homeless at 15 and managed to make it through high-school without my teachers or schoolmates knowing about it (or at least I like to think that I successfully concealed my situation at the time); I remember it as a happy part of my life because it was also a period of great freedom

As a result of this far-from-ideal start in life, I suffer from physical and psychological consequences that still affect my daily life as of today.

You wouldn't be able to tell if you met me at a party, for several reasons:

• I don't attend parties
• I don't engage with strangers
• my physical scars are internal, specifically inside my brain, and are only visible through medical imaging; they are real and very obvious in MRI scans
• my psychological wounds are deep; I have lived with them most of my life, I knew I was not “normal”, but I had no idea how serious they were until I had a complete meltdown at age 40
• I am very good at hiding how broken I am

But my life is not all misfortune. I also had my share of luck:

• I am not stupid. Despite a limited ability to study (I have concentration issues), a great difficulty to have a social life, and a lot of scar tissue in my brain, I am pretty good at solving problems, which allows me to make a decent living as an IT professional
• I met a wonderful woman 30 years ago, and we have been together ever since. She is my rock, and without her I wouldn't be alive today
• when I reached the age of 40 my life spiralled out of control, but my (smart) family doctor quickly identified the issue by asking the right questions; this led to a diagnostic (PTSD, but actually C-PTSD, even though it doesn't formally exist in the DSM-5) and paved the road for a successful treatment. It took years but it saved my life
• I live in a country where I was able to receive years of treatment and counselling without having to pay out of pocket. I did pay for some specialised treatments (EMDR, and a 2-month inpatient program), but without government-funded health care I would not be here today

To add to the context: I am estranged from my blood family. They all live on the US west coast but I don't have contact with them. My wife's family is mostly in France and the US. She has relatives all across Canada but we are not really close. This means that we don't have a support network and are pretty much isolated. This situation was most difficult when the kids were young, but they're fine young adults now.

Mrs. Kicou spends a few months in France every year to assist her siblings in taking care of their aging parents. Her Dad, in particular, is bedridden, suffers from dementia, and requires 24/7 care. On of her sisters who lives in the US also does the same: they take turns to look after their parents.

After this very succinct and simplified summary of my personal journey and life situation, you may understand better that my goal in life hasn't been to build a career or amass wealth: most of my life has been about surviving this world.

Surviving materially, financially, and most importantly: mentally.

Even though things are better now from a mental wellness perspective, my priorities have not changed.

In terms of financial stability, things are okay but still not ideal:

• I carry debt, mostly due to medical treatment —it is not the care in itself that dug my hole, but the adjacent costs and the fact that I had zero income during that time. Two months may not seem like a long time, but as the sole breadwinner for the family, this put a pretty big dent in our finances
• on the other hand, I am managing it: we fully own our two vehicles and will be done paying our house in less than two years. At that point the pressure will ease and I will focus heavily on paying off the remainder of our debt
• one of our kid is done with university, she has left the nest and is living her independent life, but we still have another one in college; when he is done and finds a stable job, it will be another financial burden off our shoulders
• we have almost no savings —I know it is not ideal but at least we will have our house, which means that we can eventually downsize and hopefully use some of the capital gain towards retirement.

We are still walking a fine line, but things are looking up and I give it five-10 years before we have a more solid footing.

In the meantime I have to make sure my brain co-operates, which is why I am extremely careful to treat it well and give it a lot of rest. My brain is my most precious resource and I don't want to damage it any further.

So ya, as a self-employed individual, I could look for more opportunities and bill as many hours as I can, but that would be at the expense of my mental health, which would affect the quality of my work, and ultimately lead to less business.

As it is, I work one to two hours per day on average. Sometimes when I have a project going, I can work eight, 12, even 16 hours daily for a week or two. Luckily these periods are few, and I deal with workload spikes very well, as long as the increased pressure and stress do not become the norm.

It may seem that one/two hours a day is very little, but you have to consider the fact that I am basically always on call. It also means that I am very quick to respond to customer requests and urgent issues, and can provide timely, efficient and personalised service. I am basically my customers' IT concierge.

I work from home, I have no commute, I can nap whenever I need it, I can even travel if I want to, provided I have proper internet access. This all contributes to lowering the stress in my life, and ensures that I can manage the occasional mental crisis without sacrificing the quality of my work.

And I still manage to make a low six figures, which I would not qualify as a lot (especially given the sharp increase in cost of living), but it is enough to keep us afloat while waiting for the next step (empty-nester life in a fully owned dwelling), at which point I will be able to reconsider some of my life choices.