I think my whole life might have just been training myself to never give up. And then when my fight was over, I found out that it wasn’t a choice to begin with.
So much self restraint and discipline. Meditation and training. Journalling and soul searching and … always viewed as selfish and pig headed and… well fuck me I’m done with that. Give me drugs.
So school was rough. After we moved to Sheffield, that is. I ran away when I was 11; scaled the walls and sat in my garden until my parents came home. I was reading lord of the rings before the move and they’d pulled me back to red book number 4 instead, bastards.
The big school was rough. The rules of conduct my dad taught: Never go down. Protect the weak. Don’t start fights but always finish them. Never hit someone on the floor. These were my bible. I never felt bullied. But I had 3 fist fights per week, often against groups, and frequently to protect other people I saw in trouble.
I was the autistic avenger.
And I fucking love reframing it like that because the whole ‘bullied’ narrative never fit. I fucking won those fights mate. They needed to come at me with 5 people because they were afraid of me. Terrified. And that’s kinda cool. Smartest kid in a school of 2000, sure. But maybe the toughest too?
Anyway I got out of that country as soon as I could. I hate violence. I’m good at rules and optimisation so I am good at (fist-level) violence but I absolutely hate it. You can’t change the rules of the game but you can change the game you play.
So I changed my game. Moved to Japan. Found my home.
Japan is awesome for autistic people. Everyone walks on the same side of the pavement and stands on the same side of the escalator. Interactions in shops are scripted. It’s clean and orderly. So I work my way over to Japan, first with a year in highschool / homestay, then uni, and then work in Tokyo.
Living solo, my employer collapses in 2 weeks, and I land a job in recruitment. It’s basically sink or swim and I swim, by putting on another mask. The first day, ‘name gathering’… sat there, fear of the phone… do it or back to the uk. I swallow all my morals and pride and lie to people to get their info. I hate every second. Within 4 weeks I’ve figured out a more effective way which doesn’t involve duplicity, but those initial weeks, even though I didn’t cause any harm, well that’s the type of mask I can never wear again. Stomach in knots thinking about it.
So that company collapses and I choose to join a guy building something from scratch. I’ve always loved challenges and building things; money never interested me. Just give me something hard. Something all-encompassing. Give me Super Meat Boy and Celeste and I will 100% them just because I need to focus so damn hard to keep those dropouts at bay.
Anyway off we go, me spiralling into alcoholism, toxic relationship, culminates in me in jail after an altercation following the death of my 10 year old niece. I was scammed basically, while drunk, but used it as a way to turn my life around. Always with the reprogramming, making these negatives into positives.
Bye to the bitch and I decide to go for a run. Can’t even hack 2km. I dissect. 3 years later I finish my first ironman. I’ve built this guy’s company. I’m bored. I’ve done 100 days off alcohol. I don’t know. Like… what now? I’ve done it. I’m at the end of a chapter and need to close it so I can move to the next. But that mental training from the ironman; that stays with me.
So off I go with my wife (non-toxic!) cycling around Asia. I build my own company while on the road. Try to do something new, end up half succeeding. In hindsight this was to accommodate my all-or-nothing work style. Anyhow. I am forging a new niche in AI recruitment, in 2014. They’re dreamers trying to change the world back then. It feels worthwhile. I have purpose.
While cycling Asia I do a 10 day silent meditation retreat, and I take an hours-per-day meditation practice forward for a few months but then cut back because it’s making me too detached.
Anyway. SE Asia, Thailand, Italy. Want to start a family but no support network so try moving to the uk to be near my family. This goes terribly. Hostile environment policy means my wife isn’t welcome, and we have an ectopic pregnancy miscarriage with our first child which some lawyers use to scam us out of a few thousand pounds. Fuck that country. We leave.
So - back to Japan and to Hokkaido. No money. Bang - pregnant. Fuck! Need to work. So I blast the prodigy and crack beers. I spent a winter drinking appx 750ml of whisky every day while I crank up the head-volume and bang away on linkedin. I hate every second. It has to be done. I will die. But;
Do what you have to do before doing what you want to do.
Fuck it’s tiring just thinking about this. I proceed to work my ass off for…2 years? This is child number one. I work before he’s born and after. I start ironman again because drink was and is not sustainable, and I get serious about trying to stop the booze.
I help build a pretty-big-news company then burn out. Again. Maybe 3x in that cycle? Covid hits and we are ground zero Hokkaido right when my second child is born 6 weeks early. We need to visit the NICU while the hospital is locked down and covid cases are ’15 and rising’. I burn out again. 3 months potato mode.
Then I pull myself up and say ‘right James - this is it - the final push’ and target Japan’s equivalent of early-days-Google. I sign up for an ironman and decide to target sub-11. I quit alcohol permanently. All at the same time. And I tell the people on the booze forum not to become overnight superman? Ffs James. Advice tailored for self.
Anyway I dissect everything. Not consciously; I just dissect it to fundamental pieces like lego so that they will always click together in the right way. The candidate sourcing to the interviews to the offers. The getting dressed to the ride to the recovery. The taping to the cutting to the gluing. It’s all automated. Every second of every day optimised for productivity to A to B to C to the end and…
What?
What then? That’s the point. I managed to get there. In 2022. I should have retired. I tried to, actually, but couldn’t. I thought it was because the company was mine and I had employees but in hindsight it was probably just because I have audhd and didn’t have medication.
So instead of stopping I carry on. By now I’ve upgraded my addictions so many times that my addiction is addiction itself. Nah that’s silly. It was discipline. I was addicted to discipline. Perfect shave every morning. Not a wrinkle in sight. A round peg well and truly hammered square.
So until now I’d had clear targets for my work. ‘Go to the gym 3x a week’ sucks but ‘squat 2x your bodyweight’ is great. For my work it was ‘buy a house’ or ‘retire early’. Now I had run out of real tangible personal goals; that’s the thing. I still had to chase something because of audhd but I had everything I needed in life. The internal conflict… steel wool just thinking about it.
I decide to target the ironman world championships. I also know that I will not be able to ‘just stop’ recruitment because I am well and truly addicted, so I - again - replace that addiction. I spend a year and waste 5 million yen trying to build a bike shop. I overtrain on the ironman and get very sick a few days before my race.
This all serves the purpose. I close the chapter. I get out of recruitment. I cancel the bike shop. Then the next day I go for a bike ride and find that guy hanging in the park. Fucker. At least my kids weren’t there. Do it at home please.
Anyway I’m into the art now. The bike shop got my body out of recruitment and the art was to get my mind out of finances. I lean into this more and more, and in hindsight it became - you guessed it - another addiction. MonkeyJ needs his 300 bananas. I also get into yoga which makes me feel incredible, but I reject it forcefully after just a few months, probably because my brain was like ‘not again mate’. Another mask. Another person’s dream.
But yeah… if I look back at my life it has been one of discipline and effort. Depending on when you met me, you would either think I was a military boy or a full-blown alcoholic. Either completely collected or falling apart. None of the effortless grace that Joe Bloggs exhibits as he cracks his 4th beer; all held together with effort and duct tape.
And people saying you’re living the dream. First world problems, I know.
But; brain chemistry. It’s a real problem, even if the physical system it affects is your brain.
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