I can’t help but feeling that this month was vaguely surreal for me. The first part of the month was fighting to get things under control financially as my student loans are getting out of control. Sitting down with the bills, calling the creditors, trying to reason with them about how I can’t afford to pay more than I make, nor can I afford to pay what they want is never fun. Alas, it had to be fought with, and in the end no one was the winner. But, just as I was starting to give up hope, I decided that I’d start paying them off the way I had originally planned — screw defaulting on the loans. Again.

One at a time, that’s how it’s going to happen. I already have my first target planned out, followed by the second, and then the third. Now, I just need to keep going forward. This thought brought relief, and then death struck the family.

About halfway through the month an older cousin died from a heroin related death. This older cousin was one of only three members of my family that ever reached out to me just to touch base. First, he encouraged me to build this company and dream, then, when he hadn’t heard from me in a good long while, he pulled me back to reality with a friendly message and short chat. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to remind me that he cared.

If this wasn’t surreal enough, I didn’t find out from any other member of the family. Instead, I found a link to the obituary buried in my Facebook newsfeed while I was scrolling through to find a business related post that I needed to respond to. This took me by surprise. I knew that this cousin used, but not to what extent. I had always seen him as the fun-loving, yet responsible and caring cousin that I looked up to.

The day of the funeral was also the day that I had a huge meeting set up to take Insanitek to the next level. Not to spoil the surprise until things are set in stone, I will tell you that I’m working on a collaboration effort with some of the local schools in Indy. As a business incubator, I want us to do what we can to help high school students get more skills, practise, have a few good things in their portfolio, and a few good letters of recommendation before they are unleashed on the world. Since I found out about my cousin’s death through happen-stance, I opted not to go to the funeral. I guess being the black sheep of the family has its advantages, because that was a great business meeting in which a lot happened, strides were made, and it helped me through the grieving process. I’m doing exactly what my cousin encouraged me to do in the first place, it’s just that I did it with him in mind as an honour.

Growing up my cousin and I had very different views on the world, but we both had high ambitions. He wanted to do art (and he was an an amazing artist), while I wanted to do something “different, unexpected, and just not normal”. Even then I thought I wanted to do something in science, but not sure what. My cousin’s take on life was, “You never really know ’til you try.”

We might have taken different paths in life, but we gave things a try and followed where it took us.

All art in this post, including the feature image, were done by my cousin and retrieved from the last year he was active on Facebook.