When you are a teenager you have dreams of what you want to be, the skills you want to have for yourself, the type of person you want to marry, and anything and everything seems possible.
Then life happens.
Life for me seemed to happen very fast. By the time I was thirty-two, I had emigrated from the UK to live in South Africa; spent a year driving through that dark continent in a Land Rover which included venturing into numerous war zones; returned to the UK; had two failed marriages; become the proud father of two fantastic children; changed career at least four times; lost all my money; and already celebrated at least fifteen years of being a heavy drinker and smoker.
Spending the next twenty-three years selling computers in the City in one guise or another, most of which I convinced myself needed to involve copious amounts of alcohol, it is no wonder I felt burnt out at age fifty-five and philosophical about dying within the following couple of years. It didn’t help that by that age I was a complete physical wreck, my mother and brother had both died from alcohol induced liver failure, and I felt old and decrepit.
Then life happened again. I discovered not drinking.
I realised that despite being older than originally planned, I could be that person I wanted to be when I was a teenager; that it was never too late to develop the skills I wanted to have for myself; that I was already married to the soul mate I had dreamed of all those years before; and that with a push and a shove anything and everything was still possible.
One of those teenage dreams I had was to be a karate expert, but of course I did nothing about it. Here is me just after my fifty-ninth birthday having just been awarded my green belt.
Life can always happen again – you just need to believe. Discover not drinking.
Then life happens.
Life for me seemed to happen very fast. By the time I was thirty-two, I had emigrated from the UK to live in South Africa; spent a year driving through that dark continent in a Land Rover which included venturing into numerous war zones; returned to the UK; had two failed marriages; become the proud father of two fantastic children; changed career at least four times; lost all my money; and already celebrated at least fifteen years of being a heavy drinker and smoker.
Spending the next twenty-three years selling computers in the City in one guise or another, most of which I convinced myself needed to involve copious amounts of alcohol, it is no wonder I felt burnt out at age fifty-five and philosophical about dying within the following couple of years. It didn’t help that by that age I was a complete physical wreck, my mother and brother had both died from alcohol induced liver failure, and I felt old and decrepit.
Then life happened again. I discovered not drinking.
I realised that despite being older than originally planned, I could be that person I wanted to be when I was a teenager; that it was never too late to develop the skills I wanted to have for myself; that I was already married to the soul mate I had dreamed of all those years before; and that with a push and a shove anything and everything was still possible.
One of those teenage dreams I had was to be a karate expert, but of course I did nothing about it. Here is me just after my fifty-ninth birthday having just been awarded my green belt.
Life can always happen again – you just need to believe. Discover not drinking.
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