They Ask, You Answer, 2nd Edition

1 The Fall

I could feel the anxiety and sense of hopelessness start to overcome me. Like every night at this time, driving home from a long day of work, I dialed my phone and waited for the bank’s automated system to tell me what our company’s checking account balance was.

With heart racing, the response was not surprising.

Overdrawn.

Why was I even checking at this point? Our company bank account had been overdrawn for the past two weeks.

For some reason, though, I still dialed that stupid number and held out a faint hope that we were in a better situation than what reality demonstrated.

After hanging up the phone and feeling the weight of the world on my shoulders, I started to cry.

I was 31 years old. My business was a failure. My family life was suffering. And for a guy who sees himself as a problem-solver, I was out of answers.

So the tears kept flowing.

I knew that, when I arrived home in a few minutes, my wife, Nikki, would likely not even ask me the standard question, “So how was work today?”

You see, some questions in life are better off not being asked. My wife understood that. She’d gotten used to seeing the strain in my eyes and the worry in my countenance. The pain was self-evident.

Such was the life of a pool guy in January 2009 …

How I Became a “Pool Guy”

Upon graduating from West Virginia University in 2001, my plan was simple: get an interview and get a job.

By this point in my life, I was already married and had my first child, Danielle (eventually, we’d ...