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I tried unsuccessfully to stop drinking. I spent Christmas without my children. The pain of missing them sent me off on a bender in New York City. The next morning I woke up on a friend's couch, smelling of beer and cigarettes. I got up bone-tired and sick to my stomach—mental flashes from the previous night darkening my mood.

Looking in the mirror I heard my grandmother's words. I heard the tone of my own mother's voice when I called to tell her the details of my failure as a husband. Then I pictured my children: my baby boy with a gentle nature and his high-spirited toddler sister. I realized they didn't deserve the fate that my actions had set in motion. They didn't deserve to not have a father. Killing myself that was one thing, but ruining their lives was quite another.

James didn't understand that I had moved out. His calm temperament never changed. But in his eyes, I could tell that he was soaking up every detail of the chaos. Grace was constantly moving, literally jumping out of her skin. She asked why I was never at breakfast anymore, and why I couldn't play with her at "her house." My answers didn't seem to penetrate her brain.

I began putting James to bed at his mother's house before heading to my own. I wanted to be close to him. For all my talk about fatherhood, I hadn't done much until then. One night, I bathed James, changed his diaper and zipped him carefully into his one piece pajamas. I could hear his slow and steady breath as he sucked on a bottle in my arms. I touched my lips to his soft cheek. I hummed a few bars of "Amazing Grace," a song I remember hearing my father sing to me as a child. I looked at my beautiful baby boy in his dimly lit nursery and saw him for the first time.

As fall arrived, I sat alone in my apartment, looking pensively out at the world below as I contemplated the need to take action to get my life back on track. I had finally gotten sober. But not drinking for eleven months didn't help me figure out what to do with day after empty day.

I had made some foolish investments in everything from bug-zapping machines to snow boards as a way to pass the time, but a college friend had recently introduced me to an internet firm started by a couple of software wizards. It appeared to have real promise. When I met the founder and front man, we chatted casually about technology I knew nothing about. His shoulder-length hair was pulled back in a pony tail, and he wore a satin shirt, unbuttoned a bit too low.

Hat in hand, I approached my soon-to-be ex-wife and asked permission to invest. She agreed to a modest amount, less than I asked for, so long as the dollars came out of my side of the ledger in the final divorce settlement. The company was a breath away from certain death. Payroll had been repeatedly delayed. Employees had grown weary of broken promises. But my gut told me this might be a good gamble. Besides I felt I had so little to lose it didn't really matter if it worked out. My life couldn't get worse.