It's taken me, perhaps, 14 days since having this idea, to garner the motivation to actually start this blog and now I'm stuck with how I start this. I'm hoping that anyone new to this blog will read this post first to really understand what I'm trying to do here.
I guess we start with an introduction, but it will be one without names. I am starting this blog as I have recently reached a low that I thought would never enter my life again. Back in 2015, I was at university and slowly but surely careening towards an abyss of self-hate, depression and, in my own opinion, a failure in life. I was retaking my 1st year of university and I still hadn't learnt the lesson I needed to learn.
I failed 3/6 units and you needed at least 5 passes to get through to second year. By this point, it was my third year at university, due to me needing to take a foundation year, because, surprise surprise, I didn't put my full effort in at A-Level. Now I look back, there's clearly a pattern within my life of consistently underachieving through lack of effort.
I was lucky enough to be offered 2 resits in the two units I found hardest; Mechanical Engineering Principles and Introduction to Thermodynamics and Fluid Mechanics. When I tell you, this stuff is not my forté, I am not lying. I have never been a highly mathematical person.
After completing the resits and being sure I had failed in at least one, therefore meaning I'd have to leave uni, £30,000 in debt and with nothing to show for it, I started to get the worst anxiety I've ever had. I was convincing myself that if this scenario happened, the only thing I could do was end my life. I was becoming committed because the alternative of letting my family down, starting a new life, £30,000 down and in a career I don't like. It sounds stupid talking about it now, considering I'm so aware of the fact that had I done this, my family would be in infinitely more sorrow than if I failed at university.
Well, that's all behind me now. I ended up scraping through both resit exams and 2 years later, graduated with a 1st in mechanical and manufacturing engineering. I got a highly respected grad job with one of the top 40 graduate employers in the UK and for a few years, I truly thought I had finally reached my potential.
I tried to continue to optimise my life and improve my knowledge of the world after university. The commute to my new job was 45 minutes each way and after 3 days, I was bored of listening to the radio and my own music, so I turned to audio books.
Up to March 2020 (you can guess why it stopped), I read 71 books, all of which were non-fiction because I don't really like fictional books. This was over 1 full month of listening to books, or 720 hours. I was so proud of this and I thought that all this knowledge I'd accrued was the be all and end all. Now, 2.5 years on from the start of COVID, I have now found myself feeling the way I did 7 years ago, except this time, there are a lot more obstacles to get through.
I don't think I'm ready to be transparent enough to go into details in all aspects, but over the last year, I feel like I've been fighting my own feelings constantly to try and force them to be balanced. I now can say that I am currently depressed. It took me a while to realise this, because there were so many things that were happening to me that I could blame for a bad mood. It only hit me when the darkest thoughts came back into my head and the reason behind that was, of course, money. As I said, I will probably go into these issues in more detail, but for now, whilst I'm in a good headspace, I will just say that my main threats to my mental health over the last year have been money, my job and my living situation. All of which have been unbearable at one point in the past 12 months.
I've got myself to a point now where I've accepted my situation and have even begun to mitigate against it. The problem is, I tend to do this a lot. Make plans, commit for a while, then eventually fall out of the good habits I'd been slowly building. From all the non-fiction I've read, I'm aware of everything I need to do. I have heard the messages of stoicism from Seneca, I have been told how to turn tasks into habits and I am aware of the intricacies of my own brain and just how much we don't know. I know what I need to do, the issue with me, as always, is motivation.
(Start here if you don't want the context)
So finally we come around to the actual purpose of this blog. Firstly, the name was chosen because "hitting 30" was taken. I think I actually prefer "hurdling 30", partly because I used to race hurdles back when I was athletic and I actually think its a better description of how I plan to get past the 30 block, which will be happening in around 18 months. I think this is relevant, because it is such a clear milestone in your life. I think that becomes more obvious the closer you get to it, but let's put it this way; if you asked me 10 years ago where I'd be by the time I reached 30, the answer would not have been unfit, in thousands of pounds worth of debt and in a job where I am heading absolutely nowhere, with minimal chance to change my stars in my current role.
This blog will be a personal pledge to myself. I love writing, I think I'm good at it, especially when you see the type of people writing books at the moment. I actually saw someone on a show called "ridiculousness" recently who bragged that "I have a book coming out, who'd have thought, I can barely write a sentence" as if this was commendable. Perhaps to the American audience who cheered on, but I've long held the opinion that this world pushes the worst people to positions of influence.
Don't get it wrong, this blog is for me. I am assuming nobody will read this as I will not promote it much. I plan to use this as a public diary, to document my journey to a better life and a happier mind.
That being said, I do actually hope that me writing this all down could help just one person plan their way to a better, happier lifestyle.
I'm going to be writing a pledge soon, in which I'm going to go into detail on my plan to change my life, but this will not be one big diary. I plan to write things that are generally on my mind. things that make me think, thing that make me angry, anything that I feel like. This blog is an open book and I absolutely welcome anyone to join me on this journey.
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