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Son Driven

Getting to the end of self

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I grew up with all the advantages of a strong Christian home with Parents & Grand parents who prayed for me until the day’s they where taken into their rewards… Grandmother Eva Petersen 06/1979, Mother Joanne Jelinek 12/2005, Grandfather Arnold Petersen 11/2007, and Father Robert Jelinek 12/2010. These are the four most influential people in my life. I speak of them in the present tense, because there teachings continue to influence me in my remaining time here in this life.

In 07/2001 I lost my management job, which largely defined who I was at that time. Then 911 hit, and being unemployed I stayed glued to the 24/7 coverage until it started to play out. In 2003 the VA (Veteran’s Administration) diagnosed me with a massive depression disorder, and said I developed my depression while guarding nuclear missile silos from 1975-1979, and awarded me a 70% disability. I have been either unemployed or under employed since I lost my job in 07/2001; I was a manager for a manufacturing company, over seeing the development of computer aided drafting software, utilized to design research laboratories.

In the fall of 2011, every couple weeks my wife & I would host a friendly, very small stakes family poker game. A couple of my wife’s brothers, our sons, who where 29, 26, and 24 at that time? On occasion my father would be in attendance.

At the time I worked a seasonal over night shift at Macy’s, putting merchandise back in order that had been riffled through, by customers throughout the day. Prior to working at Macy’s I spent countless hours playing online chess, or free online poker tournaments. I was looking for something to do overnight on my nights off. On my 55th birthday I decided to gift myself $100 and buy a rack of poker chips at a local casino. In my first session at the Casino I was ahead over $700. It was not so much that I was a good player, but lucky. It happened to be quad Thursday’s, and there where two 10’s on the board while I had two 10’s in my hand. So both the house & the pot gave me a pile of money on the one hand. Any ways, now I had money to play with, I knew in my heart I should not be at the casino, but what else did I have to do on the nights I had off. I decided that I would not loose more then the $100 I started with and then I would be done.