This story is for me, but you can read along if you’re interested.
Why share my story if I don’t want people to read it?
- My future reference.
- Remembering where I have come from.
- An opportunity to write about significant experiences.
But the reason this is public is so those interested can get more context about who I am.
Like most people remembering what happened when I was younger, it comes in spurts.
A situation, an object or familiar experiences help me remember parts of my childhood.
However, I am attracted to some experiences more than others.
Bop on the nose
Being a well-behaved child, I rarely got into trouble.
But in primary school, about 8 years old, I got my first behaviour slip.
A letter home to my parents.
The parenting I experienced was very ‘traditional’.
Physical punishment and consequences were common.
So this behaviour slip would certainly lead to serious consequences.
I got other behaviour slips while at primary school but I remember this one because of how I got it.
Someone in my class was teasing me about my hearing.
Being deaf on my right side, people would whisper things that side, make noises around me, or click their fingers next to my ear.
Although I couldn’t hear most of it I could feel their breath on my face.
Feel the rush of air from the click of the fingers.
And sometimes the whispers were loud enough for me to hear from my other side.
Often not nice things…
One particular person had been annoying me all day during sports day practice.
Yes, all day.
Most of the time I could deal with it, but after a while it got to me.
I did tell the teacher about it – to which she did nothing – so by the end of the day I was getting really annoyed.
As I was standing up to go back to class afterwards, he had been flicking his water bottle next to my ear, but I hadn’t heard it.
So I bashed my face into this bottle as I turned around to stand up.
Erm… I lost my temper.
A firm bop on the nose and I was the one getting told off for breaking the boy’s nose.
I got told off for 1 moment after his full day of annoyance.
Not fair!
Yes, I deserved my punishment. The behaviour slip.
But why the teacher did nothing to the boy I still don’t understand.
Maybe a broken nose was enough…
I learned that day that people would ‘test‘ my hearing and I would need to get used to it.
Attention detention
As I transitioned from Primary school to Secondary school, 11 – 12 years old, there were the usual worries.
Bigger school. Older children. Social group changes.
But detentions and grades were actually my biggest worry.
I was terrified of getting a detention in year 7. My first year of secondary school.
Homework was done well before it was due.
My tie always showed the school logo below the knot. Shirt always tucked in. Blazer ironed sharp.
There was no reason for me to get a detention - except in class.
Telling the teachers and peers about my hearing turned into something of a game…
Will they remember today?
How many times do I need to ask them to speak up?
Who is going to mumble things to make it hard for me to hear this time?
Without my ability to lip-read I would have been lost in most lessons.
But this meant if I was working, looking at the paper, and the teacher asked me to do something I would rarely hear them.
Classrooms aren’t known for being quiet places.
I often missed questions, commands, and directions given by the teacher to either me or the class.
If I didn’t act like a sheep, I would always look more out of place than I already did being the last to respond.
Although I avoided detention, I avoided it because I focused so much on doing the ‘best’ in class.
I learned to play the game of school.
Answer questions to participate. The ones I heard at least.
Finish all the work in the lesson.
Asked for extension questions so teachers knew I had done the work.
Do anything I could to not annoy the teacher.
My attention was on avoiding detention.
Being a solid B student, I knew enough to pass, but not enough to understand any complex question.
But this came at a cost.
Wanted when needed
During class, I didn’t talk to many other people because I was so focused on avoiding detention.
Don’t get me wrong, I talked to others and messed around like others.
But only after I had done the work I was supposed to do.
I often found myself doing two or three tasks in front of the class.
However, this meant my social group in class was the others playing the game of school.
Outside of class was a different story.
Sport was, and is, my main interest.
Trampoline, Handball, and Football as my main three sports but I have done most others.
Rugby, Cricket, Rounder, Baseball, American Football, Table Tennis, Athletics, Kabadi you name it I have probably done it…
But my ‘social’ life, if I can call it that, was limited.
Trampoline wasn’t for boys, I was asked about it when we had our trampoline lessons.
Football was split between the ‘cool’ kids and the rest… I was part of the rest, so I was spoken to when I was in the team.
In dance lessons the boys spoke to me when they wanted help, and the girls spoke to me when they wanted to talk to the boys.
Math, Science, French any class I had, if I had the answer I was spoken to, otherwise I felt like a ghost.
This was my experience at least.
I felt like I was wanted when I was needed.
Not part of a particular group, more a +1 if the situation fits.
Starting over
Not wanting to be the +1 all the time I decided to go to a different sixth form from 17-18.
In England, this is known as further education.
The two years between secondary school and University.
At the time, the trampoline club I was at, was the same place as the sixth form I chose.
I thought more people would ‘accept’ me as a boy trampolining.
Which they did.
But starting over was harder than I thought.
I was the outsider.
Most people had gone through secondary school together.
5+ years with the same people and I am the new kid.
For the first time in five years, I had to prove I understood what the teachers were talking about.
I couldn’t just do all the questions first.
The game had changed.
Going from GCSE to A Level was a HUGE change.
This new game had new rules, but I worked them out.
I got good at passing the tests.
I remember doing so many past papers that it didn’t matter what practice papers the teachers used – I had already done them.
Although I couldn’t explain why the answers and working out what I had done were right, I knew it was what the examiners were looking for.
My GCSE exams were a fluke by most accounts.
No revision/study/practice program. I turned up and hoped.
My A Level exams were different.
I had done so much practice I was sure I would do well.
Until the day before my first exam.
Shock to the system
At 17 years old, I hadn’t experienced much loss, stress or trauma.
A dislocated shoulder at 13, stabilization surgery at 16 and various other sports injuries.
But nothing I felt I had no control over.
Then right before my first A-level Biology exam, I lost 3 members of my family within 48 hours.
My nan included. She meant so much to me.
When I ran away from home, I would go to her.
If I had any issues I didn’t want to talk to my parents about, I would go to her.
This wasn’t a sudden loss. She had been ill for a few years by this point but it still hurts.
A lot!
My grandad and great-aunt also passed before this exam so it is fair to say, I wasn’t focused on the exam.
After the exam period, my results showed I had, for the first time, failed.
Failed not one exam, not two exams, but 5 out of the 6 I took.
Failure here meaning a grade below what would be needed to continue taking that subject into the next year.
The deaths in my family and failure in academics were a massive shock to my system.
This is when I started having panic attacks.
Started going to therapy.
I started isolating myself from the few people I did speak to.
At the time I would say to myself ‘You are fine, the panic attacks aren’t that serious’.
Oh how wrong I was.
Entering the matrix
Through, what I would describe now as militaristic education, I passed my A levels to go to University.
Through school I wanted to be a PE teacher.
But at the University open day, I spoke with course leaders from:
- Teacher QTS (qualified teacher status)
- PE (Physical Education) teaching
- Sports Coaching
- Sports science
The QTS course was 4 years. A fourth year for the teacher status qualification.
However, you could end up in the same place if you took the PE teacher which was 3 years, and did the QTS as an optional after.
Then sports coaching was like PE but focused less on the school curriculum which sounded interesting to me.
Still with the optional QTS if I wanted it.
And sports science was a no for me straight away. Way too much writing.
Reading and writing were the two things in school I hated. And I mean hated!
Written English was my worst subject.
Reading was something I did only to understand questions on tests.
They were school activities – not for everyday life.
Or so I thought at the time…
Sports coaching seemed the simplest and most flexible of the three realistic choices.
Well… that is what I thought.
Making a choice
The Matrix is a very popular set of films.
I could talk about the philosophy and ideas behind it for hours.
Simply put, the main character is given a choice… take the blue pill or the red pill.
If he takes the blue pill everything stays the same.
If he takes the red pill he is woken up to the ‘truth’ of the world. Thus, leading to the story.
My head of course used this analogy all of the time.
Unlike you might be thinking I didn’t take the red pill in my first lecture.
Nor my first term.
Not even my first year.
I loved his lectures. They got me thinking about things I had wondered all the way through my sports career to that point.
Why do coaches shout so much?
What are all the cones for?
How do you motivate those that don’t want to play?
When do coaches get taught about psychology, philosophy, sociology, biology or any science apart from the weekend coaching courses they go on?
My degree helped me explore many of the questions I was struggling with in my sports context.
Poking the mirror and it wobbling, instead of standing still.
But my life was still a mess.
I hadn’t yet taken the pill.
Taking the pill
Just for clarity, this pill is metaphorical.
I refused medication for my social anxiety and depression and avoided any hearing aid that could be seen.
My goal was to be ‘normal’.
Or at least appear normal.
Fashion was never an interest of mine, apart from sports clothes, but I connected with the colour Orange.
All I can say is that the colour felt comforting.
I smile when I see the colour.
It reminds me that the world is and can be a bright place.
But it also reminds me I am different. Not like any other.
During some of my darkest years between the ages of 17 and 21, my orange jumper from school helped me smile.
After one of my semi-regular hospital visits at the beginning of my second year at University, I remember this one lecture.
Sat on the right side of the room – of course – I was close to most of the empty tables.
The room entrance was on the left, so most people sat in the first seat they saw.
During the lecture, my head of course pointed at an empty table in front of me.
He asked everyone ‘What could that be?’
After a couple of seconds, I said ‘a table’.
To which he responded ‘what else?’
What else… what else? What did he mean what else? It is a table.
I remember us all looking around wide-eyed at each other confused.
He said again ‘What else could that object be?’
Silence…
I had no idea what the right answer was - and that was the point.
‘It could be a fort, a stool, a chair, a house’
He listed off so many things, but I was thinking – No. It is a table.
Then he said the words that were my ‘red pill’.
‘I perceive different affordances of the object’
Long story short, he introduced me to Ecological Psychology and by extension ecological dynamics.
Coaching obsession
Obviously doing a sports coaching degree I was coaching sport.
Football at local academies.
Handball and trampoline with the university.
But also trampoline in the clubs I was training at.
My time was spent researching coaching science, listening to lectures about coaching science, and putting coaching science into practice.
But all the other coaches said things like:
- That isn’t right.
- You can’t coach like that.
- Don’t worry you need more experience.
However, the lasting comment that I remember the coach saying to me was…
I don't know what they are teaching you at university but it is all a load of rubbish.
That wasn’t good.
This coach was also highly qualified.
Well, they had a high national governing body (NGB) qualification.
The thing I spent most of my life learning about was ‘wrong’.
At this time, I was still insecure and unsure about what I was learning so listened to the coaches and stuck to theory.
Then lockdown.
Pandemic
In 2020 when the world closed down I was graduating with my MSc in strength and conditioning.
My five years of higher education were coming to an end.
By this time I had been making YouTube videos for almost a year in my spare time.
With limited opportunities to do anything in sports during lockdown, I set my degrees aside and focused on YouTube.
Technology and software became my sole focus.
Camera settings. Lighting. Audio. All the video editing things you can think of.
I researched how to script videos, title videos, make interesting thumbnails but most importantly – how to build a business.
YouTube started as a way to build my confidence and talk about interesting things.
It evolved into a way I could earn money and meet other interesting people.
If you recall, during my undergraduate degree I was too scared to talk to most people.
But through YouTube and applying the ideas I had learned in the later parts of my BSc and my MSc, I was talking with people across the world.
The ideas from ecological dynamics helped me build a small business for myself on YouTube.
One of the connections I made was with Jonathan Stewart.
We met through a joint interest in the Notion app.
Years later we talk almost every week on our podcast.
Something I never thought I would say!
Or type 😅
Although the lockdown blocked my career path, it opened up another…
That brings us to 2022
There is still more to add, and other stories I would like to share but that’s it for now.
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