"I'm just a Caregiver at the moment but…"

I was talking to an old university friend I hadn’t seen for several years when I spoke this familiar sentence. I then gave my friend a half-hearted excuse for my current occupation and a vague description of a “proper career” that I would be pursuing once I was finished doing this “caring thing”

I’ve been my older sister’s full-time Caregiver for nearly three years now (she has a Learning Disability, Epilepsy, and a whole host of mental health issues) and in that time, whenever someone asks me what I do for work…

Mixed Martial Arts

In the wake of Justin Gaethje's recent defeat at UFC 254 to the newly crowned pound for pound number one, and Lightweight Champion, Khabib Nurmagomedov, the UFC YouTube channel released their customary episode of the “Fight Motion” video series which provides highlights of their marquee bouts through the lens of slow-motion video footage.

I always look forward to watching installments of the Fight Motion series, perhaps even more than the live events themselves — the slow-motion footage provides you with a level of detail the live events just can’t match, revealing things that are impossible to notice in the fast-paced…

Humour

I’ve got to let you all know something super important at the outset:

I got up at 3:45 am this morning and swam 7 miles.

I biked to the swimming pool, taking an extra-long route (like 20 miles extra long) and I biked back home.

By 6:30 am I had cycled 40 miles and swam 7.

But that wasn’t enough. I got straight off the bike, dried the sweat from my chiseled body ( you-could-grate-cheese-on-my-six-pack chiseled) and then I did a causal 16-mile run…no biggy.

Are you feeling like a lazy piece of crap yet? You should be.

I bet…

When I was in my late teens and beginning my university studies, I had big aspirations for my life. I wanted to be a successful novelist or screenwriter on most days, on other days I wanted to be an esteemed lecturer with a ‘Ph.D’ and ‘Dr.’ attached to my name.

Whatever it was that I ended up doing with my life, I wanted it to be something that made me into a person that other people talked about, admired, and even envied.

I just wanted to be a success in the most typical sense of the word, the guy who…

On the last Friday of every month, my monthly bank statement pops up in my email inbox. If you’re like me and don’t like to be reminded of all the pointless purchases you made in the previous four weeks you probably give your monthly bank statement a superficial glance — ensuring the balance is correct and nothing looks suspicious — but then there’s that odd month when, for whatever reason, you look a little closer and you cringe at what you see.

The most common object of my bank-statement induced shame? It’s always the amount of money that I’ve spent…

Author’s Note: I cite various British sources in this article that use the term ‘Learning Disability’ to refer to an ‘Intellectual Disability’. This is standard practice in Britain. In all such instances, the British use of the term shouldn’t be confused with the American definition of a Learning Disability — an umbrella term used to refer to a variety of learning deficits (e.g. Dyslexia, Dyscalculia, and Dysgraphia)

Earlier today I attended a church service with my sister, Maria, for the first time since this pandemic began. Maria has an Intellectual Disability and, as her Caregiver, I help her to attend…

During this current pandemic there have been a few things that have helped me keep my sanity; listening to podcasts, watching too many TV series on Netflix, and spending extra time with my family have been some of my go-to comfort blankets whilst the world has been turned upside down.

But aside from these fairly typical home comforts, there is also something slightly less ordinary which has provided me with the perfect form of escapism from anything related to COVID-19 — watching mixed martial arts (MMA), specifically the ‘UFC’ (Ultimate Fighting Championships).

During this pandemic, the UFC seems to have…