I'll Be Your Buddy

I have a confession to make: I haven’t met all of my Facebook friends.

If you send me a friend request and I see we have a bunch of mutual friends and your profile picture is you SCUBA diving, I’ll accept it. You go on my SCUBA list.

Why would I accept friend requests from people I don’t know?

I look at it like this: If we end up on a dive boat together without a buddy, I’ll buddy up with you. That means, to some extent, I trust you with my safety, my life. Assuming you’re a decent dive buddy, I’ll exchange contact information with you anyway so we can trade pictures and keep in touch.

So if you’re a diver, I’ll be your buddy.

But this post is about more than that. It’s not as fun as my philosophy towards insta-buddies, both online and on the dive boat. This is going to be one of my rare Public Service Announcements.

A close friend committed suicide recently. I think it’s normal to be a little introspective when we lose someone close to us, at least it has been for me each time.

I don’t really understand suicide, so I did a bit of research.

The main cause of suicide is an overwhelming feeling of despair. This despair can be caused by many things, but common issues I read about include failed businesses, relationships, and finances.

Looking at the dive industry and how we’ve been having more than our fair share of issues as part of the global economic slowdown, I can imagine there may be some of you having failed businesses leading to failed finances leading to failed relationships.

I want you to know I’ll be your insta-buddy if you’re feeling overwhelming despair.

If you just want to chat, hit me up on Facebook.

There’s also the Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255.

If your dive business is failing, you’re feeling down, and you just need some advice, contact me and I’ll give you some marketing pointers when I have a free moment, no charge.

Hang in there, and please don’t make a permanent decision for a short term problem.

We’ll be back with marketing stuff soon.