So hello! I have never really written an introduction before...It seems to me that a good one walks a fine line between giving enough information so you can start to understand the person I have become today and a total oversharing of things nobody wants to read. If I am going to do this though I might as well go all in, so prepare for a lot of text and I will forgive you for skipping parts if you so choose! The first time I tried to write this, it was well over 4000 words long so I have tried to cut out a lot! I am sorry I do not have a lot of pictures to add here.
I guess I should start at the beginning, so I was born in England, in a slow city by the sea on the south west coast. Due to its location, we had rain a lot of the year, never quite managed more than 1cm of snow on the coldest winters and didn’t get too hot during the summer, going to around 22 degrees on the hot days. I never really did feel the cold that much though and one of my earlier memories is of actually having snow in the back garden one year (you could still see grass poking through but it was enough to pick up and make a snowball) and being so excited I raced out to play in just underwear, not even wearing socks!
CHILDHOOD
I was lucky enough to be born into a family that loved me and have a younger sister and brother. Whilst they loved us, my parents did struggle to do the same for each other. When I was around 5 my dad left the country for 4 years without any contact at all. I do think him leaving at the time was for the best though, they grew to see life in completely different ways and nobody would have been happy if they forced themselves to stay together. I still have memories of hiding at the top of the stairs as they argued, but it was never directed at us. So whilst not the ideal start, it is a lot better than many I’ve known and I count myself lucky for that.
You could say I was a sensitive child and whilst I did have friends we went on day trips with, I found it hard to truly connect with people and always felt slightly outside of the close friendships. What I did discover though was a love for gaming. My father was always very into his new technology and after leaving my mother started formally studying computer skills as well to increase her income to help support 3 children. This meant that we had a computer very early on and I still remember playing minesweeper on windows 3.1 when it was fairly new! She went without, to also buy us a sega megadrive and playstation when they came out as well and whilst I wasn’t able to truly appreciate it then, I do now. As these games brought me a lot of joy as a child.
It was when I was in year 4 or 5 in school that they introduced some strange circle time reading thing, that was generally a huge bore but led me to my second love, reading! One lesson we had a snippet from the start of the hobbit and I was really interested. I found that we had an actual copy of the book...so I “borrowed” it. I did return it when I was done (which didn’t take long) and thankfully it seems nobody else was interested at all and nobody noticed it was missing. I loved it so much though that I had to read Lord of the Rings as well. I also then started reading countless books and even got a library card to have a wider selection, with a heavy focus on fantasy. I still love reading but almost only read fantasy stories, I just like magic really and the control of the world around you it appears to offer. Also I like stories to have a happy ending, I don’t read to be reminded of the horrors and cruelty that goes on in the world.
Throughout school I was not exactly a model student. I think it is just best to not go into too many details. I was not naughty, I just did not ever do homework and rarely turned up. I went into 6th form because I didn't know what else to do and didn't want any of the jobs around. Thankfully my school was only interested in grades and accepted me even with my lack of presence and naps through the lessons I did go to.
UNIVERSITY
Before going to university I did have a gap year to spend some time doing low level jobs (call centres, data entry, loading submarines and ships in the dockyard) to earn enough money to visit some friends up the country and even some friends I made online in Norway. I also did this Outward Bound course in the lake district which was a transformative experience over 3 weeks. It was a lot of outdoor activities and team building work and whilst I was still probably known as the laziest there that year, I was more invested in it than anything else I had been outside of games and books. But then the time to go came around, so off I went.
I went for similar reasons to why I stayed on for 6th form. I didn’t see myself enjoying a lot of the job offers in my city and everybody around me was talking about how you have to go to get ahead in the world. Thankfully I guess my personal statement was good enough and the university in Leeds let me in. However my time before had mostly been spent playing games or drinking at my friends house...so when I got to university and the people in my halls were all about partying, I just went completely overboard. I also suddenly had so more money in loans than I had ever come close to having before. I spent far too much money on alcohol and cigarettes, did absolutely no work at all, going to the student union from 11, drinking snakebites and black until around 6 where I would go and get ready to start drinking properly. Looking back now I was extremely lucky that I got glandular fever during this time and it was followed with post viral fatigue, leaving me out for a couple months. My university offered 2 things, I could make up all the tests and coursework I had missed whilst ill at the same time as our end of year ones or restart the year again next year. I picked the obvious choice of restarting the year, I mean I was only here to buy time anyway right?
However when it came to start again i decided that I really didn’t actually enjoy all the drinking and partying that much. I also realized that the couple times I turned up there were some really interesting ideas, so when I went back I was determined to put a little effort in for once. My 2nd first year went much better than any other time spent in educational facilities. I made a couple really great friends who helped motivate me and turned up to quite a lot of the lectures. I even started doing the coursework (admittedly the first sentence was never written before 2am the night before it was due) and scored pretty highly getting mostly 1sts. I drank and partied a little but it was much more reasonable and turned some smoking greener substances instead of consuming alcohol. I found this far more pleasant, with a significant decrease in downsides and it helped me be more productive and work through boring situations. As I got to 2nd year though the lectures started focusing on less interesting topics, whilst being so incredibly close to them. So I found myself reading for hours and hours down little intriguing rabbit holes I found in the references, instead of for the actual topic of the coursework. This led to my coursework to start coming in later and later. We were lucky enough that we only lost 5% grade for every day the work was late, so I was still scoring pretty well even when it was a day or 2 late and not just an outright fail like some others.
Then I got to 3rd year, the workload wasn’t really that different but I suddenly had to start looking at what I would do next. After a few work placements I realized I was too much of a bleeding heart to go into counselling, hearing people's stories would crush me and I couldn’t just “leave it at the door” when I couldn’t do anything to help. I started looking at the wider world...and was not impressed with what I saw. From where I was at the time and what I could see, it all seemed very depressing. Honestly the future looked really bleak to me and I fell into depression. I almost didn’t actually do my dissertation. It had to be at around 10,000 words and include a study we had conducted ourselves. Thankfully once again my friends managed to break through and motivate me to start in the end. I got people starting to fill out questionnaires for it the same day it was due in. I think I slept like 8 hours during the next 4 days, researching and writing and smoking all the time. I ended up getting it in 5 days late, which is quite a few points to lose, but thankfully still passed (if I had failed that I would have failed the whole course, regardless of my other test scores).
At the same time my family back home was really struggling with bills and mortgage payments, so whilst everybody else was talking about where they were off to go and live now I went back home to try and save money and help out. It maybe wasn’t the best decision but with how expensive rent is I thought if I stayed in Leeds I wouldn’t be able to send enough back. In hindsight it was actually a terrible decision, finding work with a degree was super hard. I bounced around a lot of temporary jobs, more data entry, door to door sales, bar work on busy nights etc. During this time I fell further into depression and eventually ended up at the worst job of my life...Tesco! Lol.
It was a huge store and really unpleasant to work there, I won’t go into all the reasons. I stayed there getting worse until my dad died very unexpectedly. The only thing that really allowed me to keep going at this point was playing the games I enjoyed to forget and the smoke.
THE MAN I BECAME
When my dad died my nan (grandad on his side was long gone) was obviously devastated as he was also her full time carer. She fell ill and went into hospital, which I was not allowed to visit for a couple weeks until she died later too, voluntarily having them stop caring overnight. There was some money, not a lot but enough to free me from the mental prison I had trapped myself in. I took a break, stopped focusing on how shit the world seemed to be and looked purely inward to what I really wanted and valued. I still took the data entry seasonal work, it was my favourite kind of job as I could do it with one hand whilst being completely unfocused, gaming had much improved my typing skills, especially the practice in WoW when I held rank 1 in 2v2 for a long time without a microphone, typing in between flash heals. I quit tobacco without even really meaning to, forgot my tobacco one day at work and decided to not get some off others, despite it being readily available. Then when I got home I was so tired I went to sleep. Never smoked tobacco again after that voluntarily and now the smell and taste disgusts me. I spent a lot of time with my brother and a friend, watching documentaries and videos on a very large variety of topics. During this time of course I was still playing games and reading a lot but despite the deaths (a 2nd cousin also died a month or 2 after) I was starting to feel better about living.
The biggest change came when my friend came one day and said: “Josh, we have to go vegetarian, just watch this one.” I was pretty skeptical, I was vegetarian for the first 16 years of my life but school and peer pressure (they didn’t cater to that) convinced me that whilst yes, it sucks how the animals are treated, the industry was so big it didn’t make a difference if I ate it or not. Well the videos hit me much harder this time and after he left I continued to research and research looking for a way to make it ok. Instead the opposite happened, when he turned up the next day I explained why we needed to go vegan. We went vegan together that very day, and honestly having somebody else doing the same thing really helped. My family were not exactly big supporters and I discovered just how much milk is added to things that really don’t need it. The first day I went to the shop I didn’t even know what to do...I just bought a bag of carrots to snack on and decided to deal with it another day. After a week or 2 I stopped feeling the need to put cheese on every single meal I had. I had to start cooking more of my own food, as my city wasn’t exactly advertising a lot of options. Still, slowly I started to discover more and more options and actually found that a lot of the food was tastier than what I was used to. This actually had a huge and profound impact on my happiness. I didn’t realise how much these underlying things I pushed out of my conscious mind, knowing it was bad but not doing anything about it, actually affected my conscious happiness. After a year I was eating tastier food every day than I ever did before, I found out that a lot of places I would eat would use meat as the main thing...whereas vegan food has a lot more to prove as there is a lot of resistance, so making it taste as good as possible is something even a lot of much smaller places strive for.
I also started playing a new game, Blade and Soul. I only did pvp, literally levelled through pvp. Despite having fairly high ping I hit the top rank pretty easily so made a lot of in game currency. One day I decided I liked the game enough that I would actually try pve (this is not something I often do, I only raided in wow when something new came out to clear it early). The first ever daily quest I turned up to I got an invite to a clan completely out of the blue, somebody I had talked with that morning recommended the leader I do it when he saw me there apparently, as she was talking about expanding the clan. I got on really well with half the clan, and especially with the leader. We talked and talked online even when not playing, watched Hunter X Hunter together etc, which is really long! During this time the money I inherited came in, a large chunk went into the house mortgage but I still had some left over for myself. Eventually it was decided that I would go and visit the leader. I was fairly sure we would get on fine, we had been video chatting for a long time, so I booked a 3 week holiday with no hotel. Thankfully it went great! So great that when I went back, she came over for 2 weeks and then we both flew to Poland together, where I lived for 4 years with her.
During this time I started teaching English, as I was a native I got paid twice as much as her, despite her being a far better teacher and having a masters in English. I also got to experience a lot of new things, and found out that despite how it is viewed in the UK, Poland actually seems to have much better public survives. I also went up my first mountain and go through a snow maze! I do love snow.
She is a wonderful human being that compliments me so well. We have a lot of similar interests, but some differences too. Near the end of our time in Poland we went to Japan for 3 weeks. I had pretty high expectations but it exceeded them all. It was definitely the holiday of a lifetime, regardless of how much money or holidaying I do in the future and that was where I proposed.
Thankfully she said yes! Still we were doing ok in Poland but she was spending quite a lot of time working for ok money in the country, but not loads. I continued to work on myself as a person, becoming the kind of person I wanted to be, no matter what the world thinks or does. During this time I realised that whilst I was in a far better position than before, we were still wasting a lot of time working to keep the status quo.
We made the decision to just get out. We booked a flight to Vietnam in a months time and then scrambled to say goodbye and get everything sorted. I got a few job offers in the place we landed but I went to a small company in the capital (35 hours away by train) focused on happiness, for all the staff first and also the customers. Obviously some stops were made on the way!
We also took the cat, she was a rescue cat that was gotten before I ever came to Poland and extremely attached, leaving her was not really an option. Minion (The cats name) is part of the family! With my current job I have a lot of freedom and earn a really good amount for the country. This has let me really appreciate life and become to the kind of person I want to be. Gaming and reading are still huge parts of my life.
Recently I have found Gods Unchained and my fiancée pushed me to start streaming. I’m really happy that she did, I always played a fairly high level, master/grandmaster in games but never really thought people would want to watch me. However it has gotten off to a much better start than I expected and whilst I am nowhere close to famous I was happy to get some follows pretty quickly and everybody has been very welcoming and encouraging.
So that is me...I went through some darker times, most of my own making but I came out of it truly happy and feel very grateful for having a life that lead me to this place. If you want to know, just ask! I am a very open person.
I have to give a big shoutout to Feanor for reaching out and introducing me to this. I have seen him show nothing but kindness and really appreciate what he is trying to do for both this community and the Gods Unchained one!
Obligatory cat tax
