
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.