I am a Registered Nurse. So what? There are a lot of Nurses in the world and being one of them doesn’t make me special. Anyway, it’s what I am.

My journey getting to this point was unusual, I didn’t have the usual motivations that attract people to nursing and it wasn’t an easy ride getting here. When I was 44 years old, I can see now, looking back, that my old life was dead. I didn’t realise it at the time, at the time I thought I was just going through a rough patch, that things would pick up and improve. Ever since I was a child, I’d always thought that when things are tough, whatever shit I was going through was temporary. I still do. When Covid came along and performed the ‘coup de grâce’ to the tour business I had spent 13 years building, there wasn’t much left of me or my life once the lockdown was finished with me, except for the shell of a unemployed, unskilled, uneducated, tour guide without a clue about what to do next or any idea that the light at the end of the tunnel, was actually a train!

But there was nothing temporary about my life situation then. Those closest to me at that time had already decided, a long time ago and long before they bothered to tell me, that their lives would be better without me in them. Now, everyone is entitled not to want me in their life and once I was informed, I accepted it with good grace and I am pleased to say that I took the dignified approach and let them leave with my best wishes. However I would have preferred it if they had had the maturity to express this a few years earlier, so that I didn’t have to deal with the cringeworthy knowledge that I wasn’t wanted and wasting my time. Whatever, if people want to waste their time and prefer to act and communicate like children then that’s their problem and now, they are someone else’s problem. It all means less than nothing anyway and as time goes by, it feels like it all happened to someone else.

Now what? I’ll tell you what. I started studying an access course in Nursing, via Learn Direct at the age of 44 during the lockdown so I could go to University and become a Nurse. Why a Nurse? because my Guardian Angel put the idea into my head while I was standing on Muizenberg beach, watching the Ocean and contemplating my dire situation while my life was collapsing like 4th century Rome. You don’t believe in Guardian Angels? You would if you were me pal! Anyway, things were not about to get any easier.

I started University at the age of 45, worked like a dog as a Health Care Assistant on any days I wasn’t at Uni to provide for my children in Cape Town and I had to deal with a lot of bullshit. It wasn’t enough to stop me though and I graduated with a First Class Degree at the age of 48. Now, I’m working as a Registered Nurse, in the best trust in the UK at a high level, in a range of disciplines, including Renal and Emergency medicine, in a profession that I love and I am learning and growing every day. 

It’s all right now, life is better. Life is what it is, I have good and bad days like everyone else but I’m lucky. I’m lucky because I have fulfilled my potential. I’m not a work in progress anymore. I’m the man that I always knew I could be. 

And along the way, I discovered Bitcoin. Bitcoin has transformed my life to the extent that I don’t need people to book tours anymore and can run Cape Convoy for the fun of it. No financial advice here,I’m not telling you to buy Bitcoin, I couldn’t care less what you do, however the world is changing, AI is most likely coming for your job and the collapse that happened to me is going to happen to a lot of people. If I can find a way through at my age, then so can you. Like a good Cub Scout, you can be prepared, I wasn’t and had to do it the hard way. I had to learn the hard way.

One of the reasons Jesus is so cool is that even though he did nothing wrong and some of his best friends betrayed him, he still finished the mission. One betrayed him, one doubted him and another denied even knowing him. He didn’t sulk, blame, get angry or resent anyone. What did he do? He finished the mission

That’s what I did, I finished the fucking mission.

I am a Registered Nurse.