[PaulHoule]

I worked at a place that was really toxic, bad enough that I talked about the coming storm w/ my doc and got a SSRI prescription proactively. When the product shipped (because I whipped it into shape) I got verbal abuse from a coworker in a meeting, I quit. Six months later they called me up and told me they were having a hard time finding my replacement, I told them if they wanted to retain anybody they'd better fire my boss, I saw on LinkedIn that he was fired the next week.

I worked on side projects for about 3 years including a vision for what could have become a big business, occasionally did some consulting work, partnered up with salespeople who couldn't sell, partnered up with "idea people" who had brought some of the best possible subject matter experts in and pretended to listen to them but didn't really, had LinkedIn bring a huge number of bullshit artists into my life, etc. Worked out at the gym a lot.

Ran up a lot of debt on my home equity line, got my wife pretty mad at me, rolled my car (it didn't even hurt!), got a real job (for a startup doing something similar to what I had envisioned), got fired (I might have been the only non-C level who thought he understood what the company was doing and that was trouble because being more experienced I could easily upstage management in all hands meetings), got another job, paid off my debt, did some work for a standards committee that realized the quest I had been on when I was unemployed, got some new side projects.

So it was not easy and did not work out the way I had hoped but I made it through and I like where I work now.