My life was never going to be easy.
Not one bit.
I come from a broken home, in a broken part of town, well known by broken people.
The life I had chosen for myself at the beginning was one of loss, hardship, and regret.
All the people I have ever met in my life to a certain point had abandoned me. I learned abandonment at a very young age. One where my dad packed his bags and went on his merry way.
It didn't go down exactly like that though, to say so would be a lie. There's lots of emotions and hearsay and anger and bitterness -- it was a case of when two people that love each other finally decided they had enough and decided to go their separate ways.
I was five though, and in my eyes, dad was no longer there so it must have meant that he had abandoned me. This is how five year olds process information.
Dad gone, he left obviously.
This caused a visceral reaction in me, a protective instinct was kickstarted into overdrive.
For some people this means they learn to not allow people too close to them; for me it meant sticking on like a sticky piece of glue stuck to a sticky bun.
For those that knew me in my earlier years I was perhaps the clingiest person you could ever meet.
And yet I still am in some ways; friends are forever, even when we don't see each other for a long time -- the bonds shared over a night on the campfire means that I'll be yours forever.
Loyalty from me comes easily, departure comes hard.
It was that which stamped me in the groin and laughed as I cried.
And there were no shortages of departures either.
The man that treated me like the son he never had; we used to spend Saturdays together shooting pool, playing games, playing football in the park; I'd never experienced that before. My own dad didn't take the time to do these things with me.
Yet I'll never ever forget the day he walked me home and told me that he couldn't see me ever again.
Bam.
Another father figure down the drain. I was 8 at this age - crazy right?
And don't forget the man that we thought my mum was finally going to marry -- and yet he got himself aggressive stomach cancer and died.
Of course by now I had a big emptiness where a lot of love should have been. A big gaping hole of sadness, betrayal and hurt.
Betrayed not by people, but the circumstances that befell me at such a young age. I was 13. I knew only people I really loved and liked left me and I hated myself for it.
I didn't understand, not at that age. No 13 year old does.
It just hurts, you know?
So I gave up my interests like Sports and Maths and threw myself headfirst into the pits of alcoholism and drugs.
I think I sold my golf set for a bag of weed -- that's how crazy I went off the rails.
And right before that I was supposed to premiere in the Scotland under 14's golf team. Crazy right?
Yeah, life has a funny way of kicking you when you're down and laughing as it's boots are stained with your blood and tears.
That was my life from about 14 to 19. If it wasn't alcohol and messing around in the town, it was drugged up in some cokeheads house.
I ended up in a gang too. With pathways into organised crime. Not that I ever took any, but there was a way in if I ever wanted one.
I was headed for the gutter, and fast, and there was no way out.
It was ambition that saved me in the end.. and my dad.
Despite my drug and alcohol addled brain I still had a lot of successful people around me; my family was full of doctors, teachers, and nurses, and there was... me.
Benefit dosser drug head.
That was quite the name to live up to in a family of professionals. Everyone had made it in life to somewhere.
I wanted that, in fact despite the pull to get blasted out of my head every night there was always a pull that was greater; the need and want to make something better of myself.
It's almost like it was built inside of me. The strive to do something..
.. breathtaking.
And well at the time my dad had a computer company back in the late 90's when I was 19 so I travelled to England to work with him.
I always wanted to work with computers. I was tinkering with them when people were laughing at me for doing so.
My first job.. of many.
I'm a hard worker you know. I've been a kitchen porter, a waiter, a barman, an administrator, a teacher, a community connector -- the list is long; my skills are many.
And yet escaping the life I still couldn't escape alcohol. Alcohol is legal and I was young, as were the friend's I made.
As hard as we worked, we drank and partied even harder.
I can even remember finishing work at 12am, going to my friends house, drinking until 4am, and then getting up at 7am the next day for work.
Of course this life doesn't lead to great things. I was working 3 jobs; 8:30am all the way until 11pm on some days, then drinking into the early hours of the morning.
No rest, full on work and partying.
I ended up in hospital in the end and taking a massive work leave. It took me at least 4 years to get back in the game.
That, I must admit, nearly destroyed me.
From busy non stop with people around me constantly, to bored all day with no-one. I not only had nothing to do but I had my thoughts to keep me company. Not good.
Suicide was on the cards, a few times at least.
And yet there was always that niggling feeling in the back of my head that there was more to life. My family had it all worked out, why can't I?
My family has always been my guiding light. Despite the terrible decisions I've made in my life I've always wanted the happy marriages and fulfilled lives of my Aunties and Uncles. They always had it good.
That was when I met the first person that seemed to understand me inside out.
I was on a job day at a back to work drive and I sat down with a woman that asked me if there was anything I wanted out of life?
Strange question, no-one had ever asked me that before.
And she sat with me for a whole 30 minutes and listened and didn't judge. I poured my heart out to her and perhaps even had a little cry at the end.
My hopes,
My fears,
My dreams.
I won't bore you with the technicals but I went to work with her and changed my life. I went from being unemployable to highly employable.
I've been sober for 19 years now.
Ever since that day, actually.
I think I worked with them for a good six years, and they seriously upped my skills, taught me how to drive, and, I met my wife there too -- we've been Married for 16 years now. We had a beautiful boy together.
But that was just the beginning; from there I went into management, and upper management, learned many skills -- and skills that were fitting for my personality too.
I met amazing people, and made many friends.
Life has always felt like a journey rather than a destination. I have since realised there is too much to see and do in the world, so many things to learn, it would take several lifetimes to learn it all.
And I'm thankful for what I have learned so far.
2016 was when I found the Hive Blockchain. I had been dabbling with crypto now for two years and this place seemed like somewhere that could encompass ALL my skills. I was enamoured by the concept of social and finance.
Not to mention the struggles that come with it!
I was already a writer by now and writing on several prominent magazines and being read by millions of people.
My work? Mental health, relationships, anything to do with the emotional connection of humanity -- that has always been my core tenet of work.
It just seemed like the natural evolution to come and bring an audience here too.
Social and finance has always been a tricky one. Friends are forever but you should never mess with a person's bread and butter.
Your friend is not your friend if he steals your ability to eat. And yet this is what we find on hive, and on social media on the whole.
People cannot seem to get on well together because of the competition.
I get it, though.
If one person in your niche is getting all the views, then you aren't. Your money goes down, theirs go up.
It's no different on hive. None whatsoever. If one person is getting all the upvotes then you aren't getting any.
How can you be friends with the person that's getting way more votes than you.
If you don't know yet, on hive upvotes are rewards in hive, which means money.
Of course some people accept it, others try harder, and even some will go to outright war with you over it.
It's hard. It's messy. It's not fair. And it creates division.
My first ever solution was to create the BRO token. It was revolutionary at the time because I had essentially created a stakeless reward token.
Hold it, get rewarded.
The mechanics were very simple. I take the crowdsale money and buy a few good APR reward tokens with it and distribute all rewards to holders but keep the principle.
Simple, effective, easy.
Everyone was happy.
People could be rewarded in hive without having to post.
I became popular. On hive at least.
I still am!
But hive is not popular.
Anyway, one thing I realised along the way is that BRO is an excellent concept but it is limited. We had sold all BRO and we had the principle but we were reliant on these projects doing well.
Success was out of our hands. And since they were reward tokens the APRs were deteriorating fast, and people were getting less and less bang for their buck.
That's why I decided to start Legion (LGN) -- we were going to build with this one, and I was going to take all that I learned from BRO and infuse it into the mechanics of LGN.
The idea was simple. I would release the token early to the public about a year in advance or so they could buy and hold something worthwhile.
And through that year we would build.
See I had money then. I had personal funds of about six figures. 2021 bull market was insane. I had money to build things, and I didn't need to rely on starter funds this time.
In fact I airdropped at least 80,000 LGN onto the community because I wanted them to be part of something foundational.
And I offered it to them at a silly price for the actual plans that I had.
Some people said that I was doing it to get money, others just thought I was being stupid.
Me? I knew I had a solid plan,
But a fork in the road came -- my funds drained in early 2023 right as I was getting started. The project that made me money had turned into a slow rug, and my downfall was sharp and quick.
That and people wanted to sell their Legion. No-one wanted to hold onto what was next. I don't blame them either though, because realistically I would have done the same.
We've been drifting in the ether for a year with no real direction since then. Just the hope that the next bull will come along and help me with funds for the next build, with what I had initially planned.
We had to hook up rewards to curation and that has been soul destroying, because my initial idea was to create a second bustling economy.
And yet, that's when I found Magic Newton in Christmas of 2024.
A strange project, one of mystery and intrigue and spirituality.
I must say Christmas time is the perfect time to launch something like that which ignites those senses.
This is when I was met with the subtle mystery of Sean Li, Jaemin Jin, the team, and their strange posts on myth, legend, and alchemy.
The tale is long, and complicated, and perhaps confusing - yet what it did is that it lifted me out of depression, and floating in the ether.
It gave me clarity, purpose, direction, and meaning.
I even learned the Green Language through it -- a babble to most, but to the initiated..
.. everything.
Magic Newton changed my whole perception.
That's why I built The Flame.
I built The Flame from the ashes of my life; the broken man turned whole, not through emptiness but through love.
Those that dared to love helped me in the past and through that I'm going to do the same with the world.
What's borne forth in the next week is done through love.
You are not expecting it.
It will surprise 99% of you.
And it's going to heal a lot of hardship.
Much is going to be built from this.
This is my gift to the world.
The world has been harsh to me, yes, but it has also been exceptionally kind.
As I've always said, the mind can either be a prison, or it can be a picture of beauty. It depends how you choose to see it.
This is why I, and perhaps you someday, will burn on the flame.