Hi everyone this is my first post and introduction to Steemit and i am excited about the response i might get. So without any further delay let me set the scene for you all.
So one day just changed everything, I should have seen it coming or at least have admitted to myself but i clung on for dear life right up to the end. I had no time to think about anything but work, i missed my family and i felt so distant from my wife, i had been missing my son for the last 5 years and my daughter who were growing up every minute i wasn't there, but i had a mortgage on the house and cars to pay for etc. You know the usual stuff most average people deal with. My social life took a back seat to the pressure of work, and it was a good job in the sense it paid really well and as much as that sounds good it meant that the expectation on what i should be able to cope with seemed to be magnified. I was an assessor for NVQ qualifications which meant i helped people get qualified in their employment.
I worked for a college where Lord Nelson was at school but i was bullied by an unscrupulous manager until i suffered a breakdown and was constructively dismissed. I then set up my own business in education running government contracts all over the country but mostly driving 4 hours to London and staying away for days at a time. When the funding was cut i managed to get a job doing the same thing again in a terrible company. After a year working there the day came....inexplicably, suddenly and almost irrationally but there it was all the same.
(Above me in my corporate monkey suit)
It happened when I had finished a caseload of 103 students that i had, i was supposed to have 23 maximum and 2 years to do it and i had 6 months. My boss called me into the office to give me a written warning for one candidate who didn't finish the work of which i just snapped right there in the office. I listened to her ranting with her disparaging nonsense, her lack of humanity, it crushed my soul right there on the cord carpet near the photocopier. I had such a sense of hopelessness that no matter what i did my life would continue to go on this loop of self destruction, I didn't know what to say, i stuttered, clasping for a moment of wisdom to put her right but it wouldn't come out. My right hand was trembling (thanks to my neurological disorder from bullying). Then the rage welled up in my stomach and it was a rage of white hot heat as it were. I found myself saying things i would never have said to a person paying me money to do a job, i could hardly believe what i was saying, was that coming from my mouth? Oh my god shut up i thought.... but no my words hit her like a smack in the mouth i had lost it and i could see in my peripheral vision colleagues looking through the office window thinking 'Your a dead man now'.
I stormed out of the office and stood in the hall next to reception staring at the door until i heard the receptionist say "Are you okay?"
I paused and looked at her and said "Something has to change" and left the building and went home and never went back.
What was to follow was nothing short of a biblical salted earth policy, i went on a rampage of bridge burning, facebook was dropped, mobile phones were sold, i couldn't look at my computer, my band kicked me out because going bankrupt was a problem for them? I wouldn't have minded but my brother was in the band! My friends saw me struggling and then left me to it, debt collector problems, my 2 Alpha Romeo cars were sold and my beloved T4 campervan were sold for peanuts, sold the cooker to buy food, sold everything i owned and then my wife sat me down at a local cafe and said we need to talk.
She held my hand and said that we should get rid of the house, get rid of everything and start again, she loved me for who i am and will love me for whoever i will become. What will be will be. I still feel all watery eyed when i think of it now and i felt bad that i had failed her but here she was loving me more than ever, seeing my torment and upset, having faith that our love was more important than any status, money, friends, cars or being a bass player or any of the other stuff i had tried to achieve for the whole of my life and that was the first realisation that life is short and love means more than anything. Its more than percieved wealth or knowledge, it began my journey of rediscovering my wife, myself and my life as a whole. I now knew i had to change for the better and rid myself of the chains that bond all of us to the hamster wheel. Yes i fell off it but instead of getting up and rejoining the others on that wheel i just lay there smiling as they all either ignored me, plugged in to the latest gadget, thinking they were going somewhere but ultimately not. I began to understand that the fools are laughing at me but i am laughing at them, running towards that heart attack, missing their children, suffering intolerable stress to keep up.
(Our newest chick)
We finally gave up the house laughing as the baillifs came in, i offered them a coffee but then said we dont have a kettle, funny what you remember. That was 2012 so fast forward to 2016 and where have i ended up now? Do i live in a bin down the side of an alley, in prison, busking on the streets.......no, not at all. Just because one life ended doesn't mean it's the end, this is a positive message of hope for anyone who feels the same or has fallen off the wheel and wondering what now.
(Above chicken coops and chalet built from rubbish)
We rented a fairly derilict property from a farmer in the country, I grow my own food, have built an aquaponics unit, started breeding and keeping chickens, been to college for 2 years and retrained as a gamekeeper, just bought a ruined camper van and rebuilding it, learned how to hunt, took my kids out of school and teaching them from home, avoided all government unemployment benefits, my wife now works 2 days a week and supports all the bills but we spend a lot of time together now and i am a stay at home dad. I have put thousands of hours into understanding what is going on in the world (not good) and hedging our life against the inevitable.
(What is left of the camper, er not a lot)
So this is the end of the introduction to who i am and my posts, videos and blogs will reflect this life change, the rebuilding of the camper from scratch, how i teach my children at home, how i deal with the chickens, food preservation, and any other societal dissassociative activities that may be of interest to someone. I know i am not alone in this awakening of the human spirit that has taken about as much as it can and now wants to extracate itself from the rat race of human activity that leaves people broken. If any of this heartfelt introduction has had any impact on you then please join me and my family as we push to become as free from the general workings of cultural expectations and happier healthier people who wish to exist in love and a hankering to experience a life of meaning and discovery.
(from monkey suit to country gentleman)
Thanks for your time and interest and hopefully
Sean