Get up, go to nursery, come home, play with toys, and go to sleep. Get up, go to school, come home, do homework, and go to sleep. Get up, go to university, come home, study, and go to sleep. For 19 of my first 22 years on this planet that was my almost daily ritual with the rare exceptions of leisure time and weekends that seemed to come round far too slowly. Although this seems like quite a mundane existence, there is some pleasure to be taken from the comfort of knowing where you are going and when you need to be there.
In July 2012, I graduated from The University of Glasgow with a B.Sc. in Human Physiology, a strong sense of motivation and not a single clue of what to do with either of them – for the first time in my life, I had no one telling me where I was going or when I had to be there. The real world, with its nearly toppling economy and high unemployment rate is a somewhat daunting idea for undergraduates these days.
I spent the next 2 years working various jobs and trying to figure out what it was I wanted to achieve in life, but nothing seemed to stick. So in the face of an adverse challenge, I decided to do what any noble man would: flee the country and avoid my problems until they went away. With limited common sense and no real plans, I left Glasgow to embark on a solo trip around Asia on the 12th of January 2014. When I arrived in Singapore, I was filled with a great sense of euphoria at the idea of finally being in control of my own future… or maybe that was just a pleasant side effect of the 8 complimentary Jack Daniel’s and coke I had received from the kind people at Emirates.
Over the next year and a half, I spent my time travelling across 9 countries, eating amazing food, drinking cheap beer, meeting remarkable people, and soaking up every bit of culture these places had to offer. Working had been replaced with relaxing on pristine beaches, my dissertation was substituted for my passport, and waking up at 7am was a thing of the past – every day was Saturday!
After 16 months of gallivanting around the globe, it became apparent that this way of life wasn’t sustainable; I began craving productivity and longed for the return of a somewhat rhythmical routine. I arrived home in May of this year and it was definitely a bit of a lifestyle shock. Although my problems hadn’t changed much, I felt a lot more capable of tackling them and looked forward to finding a career path that would push me out of my comfort zone in the same way that travelling had.
I started working for Fitwise Management Ltd as a Sales Executive on the 12th of September 2016; so far it seems like a company with great potential and can provide the means through which I can push myself while doing what I love most, working with people. My role at Fitwise will be heavily focussed on the selling of floor space at several of our annual events held throughout the UK which for me, is a very exciting opportunity, as it will allow me to interact with a wide range of our clients while fulfilling my needs to travel to different places and experience new things that regularly put me outside my comfort zone. For the past 5 weeks, I have been slowly coming to grips with everything this industry has to offer, such as meeting some of our most loyal customers, visiting exhibition venues and learning all the behind the scenes work that goes into making our events run successfully. Everyone has been very supportive and I know already that the people I’m working with will be able to teach me new skills while constantly pushing me to do better in not just sales, but in all aspects of event management. The idea of waking up at 7am no longer seems like such a daunting task.