wow, life has taken me on one hell of an adventure since I was last active on this board, but as always it tends to bring you full circle sometimes.
I had a beautiful 30 gallon in the past that ended up falling into disarray when I got arrested for a crime I didn't commit, spent little over a month away from home and the tank crashed bad due to not being able to be properly maintained although I did pop in when I could....eventually ended up giving all the fish and plants away (maybe it was here?!) and tearing down the tank.
I was in what seemed like a failing long term relationship, life had appeared to really hit a dead end, or at least one hell of a gravel road.
I was working dead end jobs as the economy slowly crumbled, pretty much trying my best but going nowhere fast, living in the ghetto and barely able to pay bills and support my family.
life didn't just beat me when I was down, it outright buried me.
Finally, I got my chance, the opportunity I was looking for (or so I thought) I got laid off from my job on excellent terms which allowed me to take advantage of a government program to go back to school.
3 tedious years of spending sometimes 12 hours in classes, another 5 or 6 at home studying and doing homework and generally "ignoring" my family and I graduated with a 3.18 GPA and a sweet Electromechanical Engineering Technician diploma....
However that didn't quite pan out, I was one of the best of the best in my class in both theory and practical, and had experience in many areas, but that still wasn't good enough for a company to hire me in the now broken economy where people were retiring but they wanted 25 year olds with 30 years of experience.
Fast forward through a brief struggle, some work on the relationship, and I stand here now working for myself with a (business) partner, with very little debt, a vastly improved relationship (which literally happened in the last like 2 months) and a much better standing in life.
I'm still living in the ghetto for now, but hopefully that will change in a few years.
Me and my gf (of 20 years) are now back to setting up an aquarium together and working together to improve our overall quality of life.
A picture of our project below. and we're also setting up that old 30 gallon again
![IMG_6089[1].JPG](https://www.aquariacentral.com/forums/data/attachments/174/174353-33bd7ff04ffdf3b646df28c589982025.jpg "IMG_6089[1].JPG")
I had a beautiful 30 gallon in the past that ended up falling into disarray when I got arrested for a crime I didn't commit, spent little over a month away from home and the tank crashed bad due to not being able to be properly maintained although I did pop in when I could....eventually ended up giving all the fish and plants away (maybe it was here?!) and tearing down the tank.
I was in what seemed like a failing long term relationship, life had appeared to really hit a dead end, or at least one hell of a gravel road.
I was working dead end jobs as the economy slowly crumbled, pretty much trying my best but going nowhere fast, living in the ghetto and barely able to pay bills and support my family.
life didn't just beat me when I was down, it outright buried me.
Finally, I got my chance, the opportunity I was looking for (or so I thought) I got laid off from my job on excellent terms which allowed me to take advantage of a government program to go back to school.
3 tedious years of spending sometimes 12 hours in classes, another 5 or 6 at home studying and doing homework and generally "ignoring" my family and I graduated with a 3.18 GPA and a sweet Electromechanical Engineering Technician diploma....
However that didn't quite pan out, I was one of the best of the best in my class in both theory and practical, and had experience in many areas, but that still wasn't good enough for a company to hire me in the now broken economy where people were retiring but they wanted 25 year olds with 30 years of experience.
Fast forward through a brief struggle, some work on the relationship, and I stand here now working for myself with a (business) partner, with very little debt, a vastly improved relationship (which literally happened in the last like 2 months) and a much better standing in life.
I'm still living in the ghetto for now, but hopefully that will change in a few years.
Me and my gf (of 20 years) are now back to setting up an aquarium together and working together to improve our overall quality of life.
A picture of our project below. and we're also setting up that old 30 gallon again
