Birthday

49 years, no ambition, and nothing to prove

It was my birthday yesterday.

That’s it. 49 years alive on this planet.

Held down by gravity and self-constraint.

Did I do something special for my ‘special’ day? Nope. Never had anything like a special birthday, except for when I was in elementary.

No fucking surprise parties, no going out and living it large like an entitled prat. No special vacation to reconnect with my inner self, as if the universe owes me a great time.

It was just another day, always been like this for me.

So, yeah, 49 years old.

Have I reached the top? Have I become all I was meant to become? Have I utilised my every talent to get me someplace that was promised to me?

Fuck all that.

I don’t have any ambitions, have never been wired that way.

Don’t want to be a CEO or a high-flying startup founder or any of that shit. Don’t need a title beside my name to know what I’m worth. Not PhD, not HRBP, not Sir, although Sir might be fun cause of the jokes it would inspire for those who know me best.

Sure, I want money, but I’m only interested in living money. I’ve been without, so I know what money means.

Don’t need a jet, an island, or fucking Gucci jeans. My uniform is t-shirt, cargo shorts in summer and t-shirt, jeans, and hoodie in winter.

I’d like to see some new places around the world, but even if it never happens, I’m good. I’ve seen enough.

People? I’ve got my people, don’t need more.

Talents? Explore my talents and use them? I couldn’t care less. I’ll use what interests me but that’s as far as it goes. Piano, guitar, song-writing, drawing and design, writing… I have no desire of being perfect in any one thing.

I’ve known I was strange since I was eleven. I can still remember the realisation of it vividly. Doesn’t matter what had happened, all that matters is that I came face to face with this fact when I slashed a teacher’s tyre.

I absolutely hated school, elementary, high school. Shit, man, for at least three years in high school, I carried the same books in my satchel every day. Got expelled a few times for various things. Many days, instead of classes, we would ride our motorbikes around town, and only show up at school if there was a test or an opportunity to have a laugh.

I absolutely hated studying for my Bachelors at university in Budapest. Being lectured on a right way of doing things found me very contradictory. Memorising names and dates of psychologists and their theories, made me hate it even more. Taking oral exams alongside the doctor students for Anatomy & Physiology, and oral exams for our finals completely sucked.

Everything else besides studying was awesome though. And Budapest is still a city very dear to my heart. Some real wild shit I got up to there.

And my Masters in London... I hated that too. I felt there was a pretence of being a psychologist that was extremely painful for me to endure. I had to pretend and play along with the myth that psychology is a science because of studies and their advanced statistics. It made no fucking sense to me. Assigning numbers to people is, in and of itself, nonsensical. Trying to fit people in categories and buckets feels forced.

All this, while working to support myself in a London hotel. Living in the basement for free, doing shiftwork. I remember one time getting cut from a final paper, because my shift ended at 7am and by the time I made it to university in the traffic rush, I was too late to submit it. They shut the door on me. “Sorry, should have been here on time.” And no, I couldn’t have submitted earlier because I was working double shifts because we were one man down.

Well, that door that shut on me, I shut it on them too. I stopped caring about producing anything with extra effort, since I saw first-hand the unfairness dished out to certain people.

Man, I used to have such rage inside me. Untargeted rage. For anything that resembled a fixed system. For anyone who looked like they belonged in it.

I’ve been in fights. Plenty of fights. Been beaten up by a gang in high school while visiting my then girlfriend’s school. Apparently, they had the title deed to that turf. Kicked and punched in the head by ten idiots, I think it was. I remember I was wearing a new Slayer t-shirt and when I was punched in the head from behind and fell to the ground and everyone rushed in, all I could think of was I hope the t-shirt’s OK.

Later on in life, been in more fights. I don’t know, I think my face said something to some people, drew the idiots in like a magnet, because people would randomly pick fights with me.

And although I’ve never started a fight, I like to believe I gave as much as I received. But who knows for sure. There’s no tally. It doesn’t really matter. Plus, I don’t have much in the sense of pride.

I don’t toot my own horn, hell, I get embarrassed if I’m praised. Do I like it? Sure, but I don’t know what to do with it. I’m not used to it.

I don’t tend to say the same story twice or even the same joke. Which is one of the reasons I’m mostly a quiet person. It just feels fake to repeat something I’ve done or said, even if the audience has changed.

Maybe this is the reason I loathe training, being a trainer. I can’t say the same things, crack the same joke, or give the same examples. It feels like performing to me, I feel dirty if I do. Can’t really explain this one, it just is.

All I’ve ever asked of the world is fairness and respect.

I think that’s what I’ve always wanted. Been dealt various unfair hands over the years, and although they didn’t keep me down, they left scars. You could argue they made me who I am today, but I reckon that’s just something people tell themselves to sleep better at night.

Talking about sleep, I’ve never been much of a good sleeper. My nights have always been fragmented. I remember battling insomnia for around a year in uni. Tried everything from bottles of wine, to cocoa, to the gym for two hours every day, to meditating, but nothing worked. I remember starting to see colours all around me from being sleep deprived. This period ended in what I can only assume was some sort of psychotic episode, which left me losing out on two days of my life, of which I can remember absolutely nothing.

Grew up as an alien here in Cyprus, having a British parent meant I didn’t fit in easily with the crowd. And after, living and working in London, I understood I was an alien there too. It’s funny really. A man with no land.

My close friends I’ve had since my school days. And I can trust them fully, I know they’ve got my back. Proven over time and shit experiences.

If you’re looking, you might surmise that we’re all just a bunch of metalheads and fucking losers. People going nowhere. No ambition, there’s that word again. And that’s fine. We’ve come to appreciate the distance. We hide under the façade, sometimes playing dumb has its advantages.

If you hear us talking, you’ll start to hear the same conversations, same jokes, same name-calling. But for me, that’s important. It’s familiarity.

On familiarity, I tend to watch the same movies and series over and over again. I’ve watched some movies over a hundred times, maybe more, and I still enjoy them fully. Of course, I do branch out, but I always return to what I know, when I want to be truly entertained.

I don’t know why familiarity and repetition of certain experiences is so vital to me. And I don’t know why they don’t feel good when I’m talking to someone I don’t know or training a group of people.

I think with my entertainment and my friends, it comes down to ritual. And anything else feels like performance, which is where the sickening comes in.

I’m not good with people.

I used to be a little bit more sociable when I was younger, maybe because I was wilder in attitude and drew people in easily. I think I was the life of the party, but it’s only because I felt safe amongst my crowd of metalheads.

But I honestly haven’t got the first clue of how to engage in conversation or network or the like. I’m too weird in what I say and how I act, at least this is what people tell me. My mannerism, I don’t know, something about how I conduct myself doesn’t click easily with others. I guess I’m too ‘myself’ and most people don’t process that well.

I understand I could work on this. Course, book, coach. But I just don’t give enough of a fuck about doing anything to fix it.

I spent a considerable amount of time trying to understand myself, my patterns, the many whys behind my personality. And what I’ve come to realise is that none of it matters.

I am who I am. I’ve worked on some things. The others? Whatever.

Besides my talents, or maybe this is one of my talents, one thing I’m really good at is helping people. And although I suck at turning this inwards, I can freely do it for others.

I can tell you what you need to do if you wanted to be better at something. To improve on X, to change Y.

And I think this is why I’ve started writing. Hoping that through my stories and personal experiences I can help you. Don’t know where this is going to take me, but I’ve never trusted plans much. They’re too rigid for this human complexity of a life.

Just realised I’ve been writing up a storm.

But I’m not writing all this for me. You might argue that I’m cleansing, looking back, taking stock. But it’s none of that shit. I’ve known who I was ever since I was 11.

I’m actually writing this for you.

I know there’s pressure left, right, and centre for being something else. Something you’re possibly not right now. Pressure from others, from society, from yourself. You see what’s out there and even if you don’t know it, you compare.

You don’t have to be that other thing. The one that fits better. Sells better. Performs better. The thing they keep dangling in front of you.

Whatever you already are, that’s enough. It always fucking was.