Sorry for the wall of text, but I really need to get this off my chest.
I met this guy at uni, and since graduating he had be living the life. He got up at 5am to workout and do all life's admin, then worked 08:30-19:30 every day in finance for £150k/year, and then would spend his evenings working on his side hustle business. On weekends he'd do voluntary management work for a charity. He had financial independence, and he was going to retire early. The world was his oyster and he would travel around to every country with a laptop. I'd never left Europe and got very envious of this.
But the sad reality is, he's been a zombie for over a decade now. He never got more than 5 hours sleep. He never ate healthy food. He didn't have a romantic relationship and never found time for friends. And he was always cutting costs to save “for retirement”, he'd have cheaper long flights with many changes and dump his bag at a hostel before getting to work on zero sleep. He never got to explore the places he was in, it was always just another office.
I'd only see him once every three months or so, even when he was living in his house 20 mins walk away from me.a And whenever I saw him, he'd be too exhausted to do any activities. We'd just go to the pub while he switched off after an hour. His biggest regret was taking up smoking, which he did to network with managers on smoke breaks at a previous job, and then found impossible to quit.
My last conversation with him was about work. I said that I get an extra five days annual leave because I've worked here five years now. He said it's not worth it, I'd be better off switching jobs to get a payrise and then take unpaid time off to return to my previous salary… I'm going to take those five days to spend with my family and think about any good times I had with my old friend.
I found out about his death when the hospital called me. He kept my phone number in his wallet as an emergency contact. I didn't know this until I got that call, I didn't realise I was the closest person he had in this world. To me, he felt like a distant friend who I only got to hang out with a few times a year.