Failed by the system or failed by the self?
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I’m writing this in the hope that it stops someone else making the same mistakes.
“Only a fool learns from his own mistakes. The wise man learns from the mistakes of others.”
— Otto von Bismarck (1871–90)
Also writing helps me come to terms with what happened and make sense of the world.
Most of my life I have been incredibly healthy both mentally and physically.
I don’t think I appreciated this until that was taken away from me.
In late 2018.
33 years old.
I started to feel depressed.
I was going to work at the Alan Turing Institute and breaking down in tears everyday.
To be honest I had no idea what was happening to me.
Two years earlier we had sold our startup PredictionIO to Salesforce.com and I was high on life.
As well as starting a new lecturing role at UCL thanks to my Ph.D. supervisor Dr. David Chapman, I was working at Entrepreneur First as a Venture Partner with some awesome people like Wendy Tan-White, Matt Clifford, Alice Bentinck and Chris Mairs and many more.
The same year I even scaled the National Three Peaks Challenge raising money for the Against Malaria Foundation with Peak AI conquering Snowdon, Scarfell Pike and a rather snowy Ben Nevis.
At the invitation of Eze Vidra I even did a charity bike ride with TechBikers from Paris to London clocking in over 150+ miles and raising a few thousand pounds for Room to Read.
In short, I was having a whale of a time.
But.
For some reason.
The EU referendum had real effect on me, I remember thinking this isn’t the world I want to live in.
A continent that had twice degenerated into total war in less than a century had found an imperfect but political and economic union called the European Union.
In my mind this was one of the crowning achievements of the 21st century.
On par with the Apollo 11 Moon Landing, the Abolition of Slavery or the Women’s Liberation Movement.
That morning I arrived at the Eurostar terminal in St Pancras I saw a group of French school children going back to France all looking devastated, lost and confused.
In my mind I contrasted the scene in front of me with Barack Obama’s inauguration in 2008 that filled everyone with hopes and dreams.
Three, simple, beautiful words.
Yes We Can.
— Barack Hussein Obama II (2018)
This was a dark, dark contrast.
From my perspective Brexit felt like a short-sighted, philosophically-driven nonsense based upon lies ( “we send the EU £350 million a week — let’s fund our NHS instead”), deception and with absolutely no basis in science, objectivity or simple facts.
Driven by the personal ambitions and greed of a few individuals who had unprecedented opportunity to influence and deceived an entire nation based on technologies which claim their mission were to “connect the world” or “do no evil”.
Think about that.
We always had mass media since time immemorial but what political actors were able to unleash with Facebook, Google over the course of the Vote Leave campaign (and later Trump 2016 presidential campaign) in hindsight was shock and awe.
No different from setting off a nuke on Bikini Atoll.
There are very few things that can be said in life with absolute certainty.
But on the basis of the evidence I am happy to go out on, not much of a limb, and say that Brexit was a stupid idea.
Like cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face. Unfortunately, for the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, the joke is on us. Especially those of us under the age of 50 who will live with the consequences.
We were failed by the system.
Jumping forward like a Tarantino movie to 2020.
Away from the geo-political backdrop of Brexit, Climate Change and unresolved 2008 financial crisis with a world economy on quantitative easing acid trip.
I was in A. LOT. of PAIN.
More pain than you can probably imagine without stabbing yourself in the leg with a rusty dagger and twisting it around.
No amount of morphine, oxycodone, codeine, ibuprofen, paracetamol or and other concoction coming my way could take my mind off the excruciating pain of having you femur snap in two pieces.
Sorry if that’s a bit graphic.
But it, really, really.
Was painful.
What on earth is that?! Is a perfectly reasonable reaction to the above image.
Unfortunately, that is my right leg.
The image on the left hand side is from last October. A month after walking around on my re-fractured femur in sunny, picturesque Tuscany my femur had splintered in two.
Less than a month earlier my friendly neighbourhood orthopaedic registrar completely missed the fracture on an x-ray.
Even though I told them I had a complicated history with my leg.
Even though I said I was 95% (that’s a pretty high confidence interval) certain that my leg was broken and I was in an enormous amount of pain.
I was failed by the system.
This was not the first time such a malpractice had unfolded in front of my eyes under the National Health Service.
Yes, the sacred cow, we couldn’t possible say a bad word about our public health system. However, the truth is the NHS is crippled by bureaucracy, inefficiencies and ageing facilities build for the 1950s.
Far too many people struggle silently with mental health conditions.
Please. Please. PLEASE.
I was failed by the self.
Don’t fail yourself.
If you need help, ask for help.
Don’t delay because things won’t get better on their own without taking decisive action.
Even when you do reach for help be prepared for weeks and months of waiting without seeing a professional psychiatrist or psychologist and being subjected to GPs whims about various antidepressants and psychoactive medications which they know f___ all about the complex interactions with the human mind which has as many unsolved mysteries as the known universe.
It is still too painful to talk about in any great depth publicly but I was, and many other will have been failed by the system.
Shining the light back on myself in late 2018.
I thought life was rubbish and everything I had set out to achieve in life had already been accomplished.
I felt so low I began to question myself and my very existence.
I now know this is a fairly common occurrence called an existential crisis.
I recall telling a friend that I would likely lose my job as a Senior Teaching Fellow at UCL. I wasn’t sure if I would ever be able to get another job, even as a postman for Royal Mail. He laughed if off but I was deadly serious.
My self criticism was so off the charts I didn’t think I would be able to navigate a postal route.
I was failed by the self.
But.
I’m here. I’m back. Like a bat out of hell.
I’m still D.R.E.
I used to often say I was a:
“Jack of all trade and master of none.”
— Robert Greene (1613)
Now, I don’t, f___ that.
I literally am a Master of Science, M.Sc. and a Master of Research, M.Res.
So people might think that using the moniker Thomas Rory Stone, Ph.D. is arrogant.
Especially using it on WhatsApp.
But the truth is, you don’t know me, I barely know me, and you’ve never walked a day in my shoes.
It serves as a reminder that I have worked very hard in my life to achieve what I have achieved.
Yes, I have had good fortune, undoubtedly.
But as the say:
“Fortune favours the brave.”
— Pliny the Younger (a long time ago) well, actually, “fortuna iuvat”.
Even I can now legitimately say I am a Master of Science, a Bachelor of Commerce and a Doctor of the Philosophy of Computer Science.
If I was a better Scrabble player I would call myself a “Chessboard” without needing scrabblewordfinder.org
The above photograph is not me but my first son, Joshua Enea, when he was 4 years old, he’s now 10 years old.
My main hesitation for publishing this was the effects it may have on my children, if they ever read this.
They are still young and impressionable and I would hate for them to ever think that anything they did had any ramification on my decisions.
I love them more than I love myself or anyone else for that matter.
They, truly, mean the world to me.
I only hope that the pain and suffering that I had to endure will at least shield them from the same fate.
One thing I know for sure is I will never fail them the way I failed myself.
It is always hard to pinpoint exactly but my depression was likely seeded in 2010 when, as a 26 year old, I unexpectedly found out I was going to become a father.
At the time I was doing my Ph.D. bringing in the princely sum of about £16,000 a year after taxes and working on a startup idea NVANA with a friend and brother in arms Rob Fitzpatrick.
After finding out my girlfriend of all but 6 weeks was pregnant I had to tell Rob that we should wind down the startup and I needed a “real job”.
I think he was secretly relieved!
Was this the right decision? Who knows.. But that’s life.
Life is hard.
What’s next?
Who knows, does anyone really know what the future holds?
As the Prince of Darkness once said:
There’s no present, there’s no future, I don’t even know about the past.
— Ozzy Osbourne (1983)
I’m just getting started with Kintsugi (Ad)ventures and proud to be working closely with some great people like Jos Smart and Saku Panditharatne.
For now you can read about this next adventure on our blog Welcome to the Adventure™️.
Thanks for reading and thanks to everyone who has helped in my journey along the way.
Finally, if you ever have serious anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder or other mental health conditions as I did I would highly recommend talking to The Samaritans by calling 116 123.
For those more fortunate please consider donating to their cause via their website https://www.samaritans.org/.
As with most good causes they are under funded and under resourced.
If you read this and felt I may be able to help then please feel free to e-mail thomas@kintsugi.vc or Tweet at me @thomasrorystone
Until next time…
Welcome to the Adventure™️
