Welcome to my blog.
I'm gonna save the introduction about myself for the next entry, so please forgive me if this entry is a bit personal. But I need to give a bit of perspective about what I'm doing and why.
I'm writing this on the eve of my last day in the job I've occupied for the last 10 years. A whole multitude of things have been coursing through my body since I handed my notice in. The usual unanswerable questions that are forced in to your psyche from high school age have reared their ugly head again, topped as always with the most unanswerable one of them all:
"What are you going to do with your life?"
I've been trying to figure this out for a good 17 years when, at the ages of 13/14, you are compelled to choose which path of education you are going to follow for your GSCEs. In my case, it was Geography or History, French, German or Spanish, and Business Studies or Music.
Picking History, Business Studies and French weren't bad choices looking back. With the benefit of hindsight I'm sure now that I'd have taken Music over Business Studies, complete with its now bitterly ironic case study for the GSCE exam: The Tesco Success Story. That said, I'd love to see a case study which shows where it all went wrong. In the end, I got an A, 7 Bs and a C. Could have been worse.
Two years later, after what I would consider cocking up my A-Levels (getting four D grades wasn't my best day), somehow I still got accepted into Staffordshire University to study Journalism. I'm not entirely sure why I picked Journalism (or why Staffordshire Uni let me in). Perhaps I felt compelled to do something I had a partial interest in to show to others that I was at least making an effort to do something with my life.
Another two years later, it was all over. I dropped out of college, and went home to my parents in floods of tears, convinced that I was going to be disowned and cast out. But I owe it to them for not holding it against me and giving me a place to stay while I found work in a petrol station so I could try and support myself.
After 9 months of this, I figured out that I needed to at least aim a bit higher, which brings me to March 2005, when thanks once again my Mum & Dad, I applied for a job at RAC. I got accepted, and on the 9th May 2005, I started working on the breakdown team taking calls of people unlucky enough to have a non functioning car.
This job paid the bills (but certainly didn't fulfil me) for just over two years. I needed a new challenge, so I applied and was accepted for the role for which I have inhabited until last weekend; dispatching and managing breakdowns. It was comfortable - relatively good money for a job which perhaps wasn't the most challenging, but still required a modicon of common sense to do. It's one of the reasons that I stayed doing it for nearly 8 years, until on Saturday 9th May 2015, a decade to the day I started at the company, I resigned.
Looking back on this short resumé, it would be pretty easy to get depressed about what I did (or rather didn't do) since picking my GCSE options. And yes, I have been driven to complete despair on several occasions. I've often hid it, pretended it wasn't that bad. But for those of you who know me well, you'll have seen it written on my face even when I said I was fine.
But it's not all doom and gloom. And whilst I'm a shining example of someone who doesn't take heed of their own advice, the simple fact of the matter is that if I hadn't have made the decisions I did, I probably wouldn't be sitting here writing this little piece of catharsis.
Going to uni in Stoke meant nights out at the Sugarmill, where I met some awesome people who let me hang out with them when I felt like I was staring in to the abyss. I also got an idea of what it meant to be a DJ, thanks to Eddie Kerr and Lewis Bloor letting me watch what they did and how they did it. And when it wasn't the Sugarmill, it was Dave Buck playing tunes that only I would dance to, Dave Buck putting on bands in the Glebe, and I'm sure he was also responsible for the awesome all dayer where Send More Paramedics tore up the top floor of the Albion pub.
Being in Stoke On Trent also fuelled my enthusiasm for theme parks, with Alton Towers being a cheap bus ride away. That in turn led to a suggestion on a coaster enthusiast website which went along the lines of; "Why don't we all meet up?" 12 years later, Coasterforce Live events are still going strong. They've resulted in friendships being made, and even partly responsible for people getting married. But most importantly, some of the most memorable times I've had with some amazing people. I'm very proud of this, and even though I'm not as involved as I once was, I have to tip my hat to Ian Bell and the rest of the team for keeping it going in their own time, just for the love of it.
When I moved back to Manchester, working jobs with weird shifts meant I could go out to Jilly's, Satan's, the Cockpit in Leeds and Corporation in Sheffield. On these nights, I met the girl who has done all my tattoos, met the people that to this day I DJ with, and met people with whom I have danced my heart out to our favourite songs, and still do even this day when we all get the chance. A midweek day off led to a chance encounter with the man who runs a clubnight called Pop Bubble Rock, which became a big part of my life for four years, and gave me the chance to travel around the country to DJ in London, Bristol, Sheffield, and of course the night's spiritual home in Manchester. Polly Thompson, Ben Hiard and Ian Stockdale are three people who have had a big part in making me who I am today, and through all the good times, bad times, blood, sweat and tears, you've had a lasting impact that I won't ever forget.
The weird hours also gave the chance to see the bands I love, and meet the people who made those gigs happen. I'll never forget Marios going crazy when Ensign covered Underdog at the Star & Garter, and the amazing day at Jabez Clegg when Kam ran the Pig Destroyer show, and I helped out by getting the rider, and looked after the band. It's great that they're still both doing what they love doing, and without whom, the music scene in Manchester would have been a much poorer place.
And thanks to all those midweek days off, I was able to fly out to Europe whenever I could and visit some amazing (and as it turns out, some awful) theme parks.
The car journeys which were necessary for all of this were also amazing. Whether it was dropping mates off after a night out in Manchester, driving over the Snake Pass with a mixtape of Warren G, Celine Dion and Roxette (to name a few) for awesome Monday nights in Corp, late night stops at Hartshead Moor on the way back from Juvi Hall or Slam Dunk in Leeds, right up to the marathon tours across Europe and the USA to visit theme parks with fellow enthusiast goons. Those memories are pretty special to say the least. (And I'll explain the term "goon" in the near future).
In fact, there's so many memories, I couldn't possibly list them all at once. If it looks like I've left something or someone out here, believe me, I haven't. The good times will always stay dear to me, whoever, wherever, whatever they were.
Which brings me back to today, and why I've quit my job. I've said it before and I'll say it again, as so many other people have done and will keep saying. Life is too short to sit back and just be content. And while some people's idea of happiness differs from other peoples, I'm now more certain than ever about what I love doing, even if I don't quite know how I'm going to do it yet. If you want something badly enough, you will do whatever it takes to make it happen, and you will get what you really want in life.
I'm fully aware that this first entry is no doubt full of cliché, and I'm sure in the eyes of some experts, rather badly written. But I really couldn't care less about that. This first entry is about cleansing, purging what's been in my head for longer than I'd like to admit. But at the very top of it all, it's about not forgetting the brilliant times I've had in life, and the little fragments pieced together that have made me who I am, and ultimately where I'm going.
So, on Wednesday 20th May, I depart my home city of Manchester for the Big Apple for what is easily the biggest thing I've ever done.
Two months.
Four hire cars.
Sixty theme parks.
Three hundred rollercoasters.
One trip of a lifetime.
"Glory or insanity awaits" - Arnold Rimmer, from "Holoship", Red Dwarf, Series 5 Ep 1.
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