This Sucks!

It's 4 am Oslo time. I hope I won't have to write another post like this. It was a response to a suicide in our DevOps community in 2015 that I wrote a blog post regarding suicide. The post was called "Karōjisatsu — Death from Overwork." Over the years, I have tried to create as much awareness of this "black plague" as possible. A leading authority on burnout, Christina Maslach, was interviewed by me after I conducted research and got to know her. Despite my best understanding, I still didn't know what causes devastating events like suicide. I am reasonably sure no one else does either, and that's the only immutable fact. The human in you wants to believe you could have prevented suicide when you hear about it. Your logic tells you there was nothing you could have done. From the top of the tallest mountain, I have shouted many times; call me, and I will drop everything to listen to you. Do not hesitate to contact me, even if we have never spoken.

My family and I were at Disney World a year ago and were about to board a Disney shuttle bus to one of the parks. As Disney vacation club members for over 20 years, we have access to the parks an hour before the general public. This young man calls me and says he wants to talk about suicide. I told my wife and children to go without me, and we talked for about an hour. This young man had been through burnout and possible suicide and asked if I would do a podcast with him about his experiences. A two-part podcast was recorded at the end of January 2022. It was courageous of this young man to share his experience to save lives. Although I had never met this man in person, everyone who worked with him loved him. During the phone call, I could feel his humanity. Furthermore, he seemed like a fun guy to hang out with and was a fantastic technician. The podcasts are here, and his name was Jesse Getzie. The founder of Liatrio, where Jessie worked, called me at 4 a.m., Oslo time, to inform me that Jessie had committed suicide. Liatrio's founder, Chris Blackburn, is a special person. He gave Jessie all the time he needed to heal and built a company that always included and cared for him. Once again, my logic tells me we are powerless against the disease of suicide. In my head, I screamed, why didn't he call me? I didn't call him, so why didn't I? Even though I logically feel helpless in the face of this disease, the human in me wants to scream the loudest I can. So I'll say it repeatedly, no matter who you are, if you are struggling, please contact me, call me, or stay with me at my house if you are going through hard times. I'll do anything in my power to listen. I refuse to let logic win over my human. Good night and God bless.