Goa : A Lesson In Life – Epilogue

Following on from my debut publication Goa : A Lesson In Life,  I didn’t really want to end the tale on that plane back home. I wanted to bring you right up to the present day. So here it is, exclusively for you on The Blogging Musician.

Back down to earth with a bump! Newcastle airport was its usual grey, drizzly self, and I could sense the colour of my experiences fading away and dulled, even by the minute. Would I take anything back home with me? The suitcase and the guitar was the same, but what came back through that arrivals gate was a very different person indeed.  My anxieties and stresses had been cleansed, I’d been emptied, rested and I suppose ready to take on the world.  Resting my head back in my own bed at last, I made my plans….

First up was work. I couldn’t be doing with it anymore, I mean, A man of my age and qualifications working in a glorified call centre? Redundancy had beaten my down, made me feel worthless, but guess what? It wasn’t too late, I could get back to where I was, do even better perhaps? To do it though, I needed to get myself ahead of the game, bring something to the table that people would notice. I decided to achieve a first-class honours degree in my chosen field (Computing). I knew I couldn’t do it whilst holding down a full-time job however.

And so I took out all the complexity in my life, I quit the office job to be a part-time postman whilst completing my “distance learning” degree at home in the afternoons/evenings while my meaningless relationship died almost unnoticed.  Two years later I’d achieved my first class degree and had started my first job as a Web Developer. Throughout, I often thought back to the people I’d met back in Goa, the boy in the coffee shop and the Mapusa market, they’d inspired and motivated me to do this.

One year into the new job, and five years after my first redundancy, I found myself back to square one again. This time I couldn’t think of way out. The first-class degree didn’t matter, I failed interview after interview. I tried not to dwell on it, armoured by fondly remembered Indian attitudes of ‘what will be will be’. Their smiles comforted me as my contemporaries moved on with their lives and families. I took up cycling, a means to get away and think, but ultimately I was closing myself away from the world.

A simple life just isn’t possible here, you need to work to finance a comfortable standard of living. Hardly an Indian mentality, but I was facing this cold, harsh reality more and more each day.  I bumped into a friend and member of my karate club on the way back from another long ride,  almost avoiding him. His opening question was, predictably “Where have you been?”. The truth was I couldn’t even afford to pay my subscription any more.

But just as I thought my luck had all but ran out, I got a telephone call out of the blue. It was an employment agency who had a ‘working from home” opportunity for me. One telephone interview later and I was back in the game, better than that I had a salary and time to kill. I started to piece my life back together again, but something was still missing……

I met the love of my life on 21 September 2012, had a Son, Luke, in 2013 and Married in the Glenridding, The Lake district in 2015

We had two beautiful identical twin girls, Emma and Sophie, only last year.

I returned to karate, in fact they were the guests of honour at our wedding!

I even got back into my guitar and gigging (for a time)

Then, of-course, I started this very website.

Of course, none of it would ever have happened if it wasn’t for Goa.  I’d still be at the call centre most probably.  It’s made my life and one day I WILL return.  For the moment though, this is the end of this particular Lesson In Life.