I Have Not Learnt a Thing

As I sit here on my sofa once more, scrolling through Netflix and playing the occasional game of 'Golf Clash', it's struck me harder than ever before.

I'm lonely.

At 27 years old, one is supposed to be in the prime of one's life, experiencing new things, travelling around and seeing the world outside. But I can't bring myself to open the door. I don't know what to do, how to do it and frankly, I have no one to do it with. For someone who is perceived to be popular, friendly and easy-going, not only do I have very few friends, (I'd say I have one genuine friend), I have no skills to go out and make new ones.

I have a lot of "Twitter friends". Online friends, some of whom come to me for advice, a lot of whom I share my thoughts and my life with, and this is fine but still, I haven't moved from my sofa. I'm still scared to open the door.

One of said Twitter friends told me to go out to a local bar. Fine, but then what? Walk up to someone and say hello? Then what? It seemed so easy to make friends as a child, so why is it difficult now? It dawned on me that the friends of years gone past have merely been pub friends, acquaintances who you see when intoxicated; a life where everyone is your friend. But in the cold light of day, I'm still here sitting on my sofa. The only person I've seen all week is my Mum.

Part of me resents this. Part of me wants to stand up and scream and ask the world where it is. I want someone to grab me by the collar and drag me along to something. Anything. I guess it's the curse of the depressive.

"I want company yet I want to be alone." The twisted and nonsensical existence we try and navigate. Maybe it's my existence that is the issue. Maybe I really am too much like hard work? Maybe my old persona has been replaced by a hard-hitting, difficult and negative persona that people don't want to be around anymore and I just haven't realised? For it is true, I have grown to be more outspoken, opinionated and combative; being more vocal about things. I constantly feeling like I'm fighting against something. Maybe that puts people off?

Unless we're all sitting on our sofas waiting for everyone else...

I'd like to think I'm not naive. People move on and build their own lives; built with romantic partners instead of "mates". People go out on dates and spend evenings in each other's arms without the necessity for third wheels. Obviously not everyone is in that boat, but in my extensive attempts to be sociable this evening, I have been batted back.

"I'm with my girlfriend tonight."
"I'm out with work."
"I can't do tonight."

All genuine reasons no doubt, but when did I miss the experience roadshow? Did the seminar of adult life pass me by in a blitz of alcohol fuelled psychosis and I've come out the other side expecting it to be like I'm 19 again? Maybe deep down I don't want to grow up. I don't want responsibility. Maybe adult life isn't for me.

Remind me, how do I make friends?

I have three options here. I can blame myself. I can blame the mental illness I once had, (and arguably still do), or I can blame everyone else.

I blame myself.

I blame myself for taking the easy way out. For quitting university, for quitting Australia, for giving up too easily when opportunities to build a new life came my way; routes that could have led me down a completely different path. Decisions that have left me with some sort of agoraphobia which make everything worse. I blame myself for not taking plunges into new worlds, for making up reasons why I couldn't go on dates and for not going to places.

I've been taking the easy road for too long and now I NEED to change something in my life, I don't have the tools to do it.

Move to a new city, try my hand at something completely new, tackle that university degree I flaked upon, take up a new sport. All agreeable tactics; for we're always told that if something is wrong, go out and change it. I am now scared of my own reaction to a change. I am stuck in the mud, as if leaving my bubble of isolation will expose me to a new disease, or an old one that comes back.

I blame myself for my loneliness.

Now I'm too far gone. I don't see a path back. I can't see a Tom that's happy and in a relationship, a Tom who goes to Winter Wonderland with friends, or a Tom who goes down the pub for a couple of pints. All I see is a Tom sat on the sofa; a Tom with a social media addiction and a remote control. I've lost the ability to be sociable. Isolationism is the only existence I see, for I'm scared of anything else, and it's an existence that will make this worse.

That door to the outside world feels a long, long way away, and I'm not sure how much longer I can live like this.

I Got Fired

I think it's safe to say that I have a fairly chequered work history. Having never been blessed with the knowledge of what I wanted to do for a career, I have jumped from job to job in order to find myself at peace with the working world. Retail, sales, the NHS and then back to sales, the workplace really has been a whirlwind of motivation, tears and dread.

Last November, in the middle of what was another familiar employment gap, I spent a day campaigning with my local MP. We were visiting businesses in Bedford and towards the end of our day, we stepped foot inside a lettings agency. I had had a very brief experience working in a lettings agency for work experience and overall, it wasn't overly nice. The stereotypes that exist weren't far off the mark and being an equality hunting lefty means my affiliation with businesses such as these were low.

What transpired was an offer of an interview and then after some soul searching, the acceptance of a job offer. Despite not being overly comfortable working for the private rented sector, (reasons for why I shall come on to), my personal circumstances dictated I really needed a job. However, despite becoming a letting agent, I told myself at that very point, I would do it my way. I would not become the "sell at any cost" agent, I would not turn into the stereotype and I genuinely believed I could succeed by coming across as a human being instead of a salesman.

Tell me... Who LIKES being sold to?

It worked. For 10 months, I absolutely aced it. I smashed the targets that were set for me, I received feedback from tenants about how refreshing it was to deal with an agent who genuinely cared about them and not their bank accounts. I was shortlisted for awards, I was touted as a Young Entrepreneur in the property industry, I became the first person in our branch in 15 years to meet the extended quarterly target and even got a promotion. It felt like I had found my path; for there was a real niche market out there for Estate & Letting Agents that CARED. I genuinely believed we could build the business we worked for based on a culture of trust, empathy and putting tenants first.

Maybe I got too big for my boots. Maybe my ideas were too radical for a Director who had been in the business for 16 years. Maybe I came across as arrogant. I could see the huge benefits of being an 'Agent for the Tenant' and not the vicious agent for the greedy landlord; a culture that has built up over decades. The industry suffers (or improves?) from a deluge of competition and I was never made to forget the absolute necessity of standing out from the crowd. I had my ideas to do just that and I had a year's worth of results to back them up.

Maybe it was above my pay grade to be going against the grain. Against the "agent norm" that has resulted in the perception that all agents are money-grabbing bastards and resulted in agencies being banned from charging tenant fees and being more regulated than ever before. Maybe the later assessments that I was a "maverick" were true, but I genuinely believed it would benefit everyone, including the business, for it to be this way. My snowballing success was proof that I would show them how to stand out and do it positively.

I didn't like being a manager. It's a very small office and being the manager was a lot of responsibility and also involved being at the mercy of the staff you instructed. In truth, I hated it. I wanted to be out there, making sure my ethos was being practiced. I ended up taking a step back to my old job of actually letting properties and this is the point it went drastically downhill.

A new manager was hired, a man who has extensive skills in sales and managing high performing retail stores. He was the "sell at any cost" man I was trying to avoid becoming. He used phrases like "dog eat dog" and "ruthless". He even told me to stop caring about people so much and think of the money I'd make. From very early on, I outlined what my 'style' was (so to speak) and how successful I had been doing it, but it was clear he was hard-wired to think a certain way. It was also clear that we wouldn't get on.

From the get go, I was being questioned by my new manager on what I did. How I went about viewings, how I dealt with enquiries and the application process. I was very up front in my methods, (methods I knew worked) in that I was very relaxed when talking to potential customers. I called it charismatic. He called it unprofessional. Within a matter of weeks, I was regularly dragged into the Headmaster's Office to be reprimanded on my "maverick style". Usually, I would fall apart, but on these occasions, I knew I had the ammunition to defend myself with. I knew I was doing well, but I got the impression that the way I was doing it riled not just him, but the office as a whole. Somehow, my successful methods didn't sit right.

This positive persona wasn't supposed to be the way of doing things. It wasn't "ruthless" enough. My overriding thought is, "When will these guys learn that conforming to a stereotype doesn't make you stand out?"

I'm not going to comment on what I think of my (now ex) manager for he has been taught a way that has done him well. I will never apologise for doing things my way, a way that proved to be successful and I am proud that I stuck to my principles. I'm fairly sure he will say the same. We're all different and I don't hold a grudge against him or anyone else. But it just wasn't going to work.

You see, very quickly, I noticed a change. An extreme change that tipped me from putting up with what I had ALWAYS found to be extortionate fees for tenants to unacceptable treatment of people in order to cash in. The belief that tenants always got the raw end of any deal turned into a belief that my colleagues simply didn't care if someone ended up being out on the street. Ultimately, I couldn't live with that and me being the outspoken so-and-so that I am made everyone else aware of that fact also.

Whatever my reservations of the industry, I found out very quickly that I simply couldn't sleep at night thinking about the way the company had treated some people. A company, and by extension, an industry I was contractually obliged to defend. When an industry starts complaining about the circumstances of problems they caused in the first place, you very quickly work out that nothing else matters but the money. Being a part of the industry, and thus all of the networking groups, you very quickly see that these people know what they're doing. Charge as much money as possible for doing the least amount of work. Nothing else matters but the bottom line.

Nothing. Else.

Maybe I was naive in thinking I could change a culture built up over decades, a culture hell bent on pushing the boundaries and milking people for all of their worth. After all, it takes quite the collective effort to make a Conservative Government take drastic steps to stop you from making money in business...

There's a certain stigma that's attached with being sacked. People presume that you turned up to work high, punched a colleague or smashed a car window on purpose. In this instance, it was merely a case of personalities clashing and a difference in (strong) opinions and as a mere employee, I lost.

I'm not going to go into specifics, but last week, I got sacked. Contrary to popular belief, an employee can be sacked with less than two years service with no reason whatsoever. The statement, "this isn't working" is suffice enough to jump straight to dismissal; a lesson I learned the hard way.

I have always tried to keep my values close to my heart. So much so, that sometimes I get in trouble because of it. I cannot understand how people work against their values to aid personal progression. Maybe that's where I've been going wrong all these years. I can give you a few examples of where my moral compass has resulted in me not just losing out, but losing HUGE opportunities.

If you look back on these extensive pages, you'll see a promising refereeing career halted by a fight against racism. Opportunities to write for national publications, binned because of a dislike of how said publications conduct themselves. A decision to walk away from a potential career in football, either through playing or coaching, simply because of who I am.

And I wouldn't have it any other way.

I often wonder how people like Boris Johnson - a man who is very happy to forgo his morals to move up the food chain - must think to themselves when they have nothing but their mind to occupy...

Personally, I'm back at square one again and while I'm anxious about what the future holds, at least this time I can hold my head high and walk away with my conscience intact. As long as I can say I defended my strongly held beliefs and morals, I will always be able to look back with pride.

On my death bed, I won't be able to take any money with me. But I can certainly take a whole spirit.