A success, a failure and an imposter? All of the above?
I couple a highly technical, multi-degree and patent engineering background with competency and communication skills in much the same way our leaders don’t.
Stand-up comedy (I gave my wife a vasectomy for Xmas) and poetry open mics as hobbies probably explain why I’m a popular speaker at international conferences on the conventionally stultifying subjects of noise and vibration (traditional presentations have been used as anaesthetics).
I’ve written and presented at mental health conferences due to my son’s psychosis, culminating in my son and I starring in the national TV ad campaign, the Hugging Barbed Wire site, and shows at the Brighton Fringe. There will be a book. I’ve also been a regular interviewee on BBC radio.
My technical writing talents (this whole site) and love of language have resulted in an intense style where every word has to perform, to multi-task – or be invented. Succinction.
Sadly, I still feel an imposter in my own life because…
Once upon a time I was a normal (but somewhat polio-ed) boy. Then boarding school occurred. An experience much like water-boarding a child – with the boarding but hold the water.
The first of two children in the Betty/Brian army family, contracting polio in Kenya was unhelpful when sentenced to boarding school at 11. Prior to this, I was born in 1953. The boy in my head whose needs have controlled much of my life was born in a dorm of necessity in around 1965.
On the plus side re school? It’s damage all the way down. It has, however, given me gimlet insight into what drives the band of damaged men and women that we have elected to rule us from the boarding school we call Westminster. The damaged band who all have damaged small boys and girls in their heads who cause us all damage because of their unmet needs.
Married my first (and only) girlfriend on whom I’d been dangerously imprinted. Two boys followed, converting me into a dad. This experience eventually helped to weaken the child in my head sufficiently for me to wrest some control from his past.
Wresting led to divorce, a 2nd marriage (as myself this time) and, finally, more writing.
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