VirtuaLife

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Okay, now we’re getting to territory you guys and girls may be familiar with.

The prospect of university was a tremendously exciting and liberating one for me. No more compulsory school. No accountability to teachers. No homework. No mixing with boys only (I went to a boys-only school). No limits. No restrictions. Just me… and my naïve visions of world domination (hey, I DID plan to run a multinational by the time I was 24… that gives me umm, just over two years to achieve that. Hah!).

The 924 still looked pretty good but having driven it for almost 4 years I knew that among its many weaknesses was that it wasn’t built for the big league (even though it looked like it and was certainly more than capable in its own right). If it’s 2L van engine was happy to take me places with minimum fuss, I was looking for the rocket-propelled motorcycle (read: shortcut). So I got myself into a Chevrolet Corvette. The peoples’ choice for an affordable sports car, these cars became popular in the hotrod community for their application in a drag racing context. Essentially, that was what I was doing. I had my sights set on an end goal, I’d found my rocket ship, and now all I wanted to do was buckle up and hit those 11s quarter mile times.

Why did I think this? Well, for starters I was sick of being told what to do. 12 years of schooling in a culture that strongly emphasises independence seems a bit counterintuitive, even if it is for the best. I also wanted to increase my desirability and expand my audience simultaneously. Untouchable was not the theme of the day anymore. I figured that if I couldn’t manipulate uni so that it did what I wanted it to, I wasn’t worth my two cents. Secondly, I believed I had a bulletproof vision. I wanted to go out and save the world through revolutionary and evidence-based healthcare. Why would I compromise on a vision like that? And thirdly, money may be the route to all evil, but unfortunately out of necessity it is the route to a lot of other things as well! So I wanted to earn bucketloads of money early on in my career, dump them into positive cashflow investments, achieve earnings equity within a decade (sorry, I believe I am misusing terms for the more financially savvy among you?), and then retire and devote my time to philanthropy or some other notable good deed.

The most notable change that occurred during this period was that I modernised. I began to stay in touch with things that were happening in the world. I blame in on my economics class in secondary school, but I began thinking a lot about how the world works, economically and socially. I realised if I continued to stay at home, play computer games and be so singularly focussed on any given thing, work included, I would never be taken seriously. Instead of making tidal waves, I’d have made a ripple, or maybe two. And I’m glad that the realisation hit me early, because even now as I look around at my friends and other more distant acquaintances, I still see that same, fundamental struggle of reasoning happening in their own lives.

Another defining factor subsequent to this realisation was about my pride. What was once used as a tool for demeaning and belittling others evolved into a… hmm, I still lack proper words for it even now. Even as I completed my 180 turn from introversion into extroversion I began to utilise my pride as a means to sustain my momentum. If I was too slow I’d have nothing to boast about. If I was too stupid I’d have had nothing to show. If I was too unsuccessful I’d never be able to tick of my planning milestones, poor me. The fear of failure kept me pushing ever forward, determined not to be consumed by the incompetence of procrastination. While I’m not advocating pride as a sustainable force for character change, it more or less did the job for me.

There was another thing about this time that I remember. The change was so dramatic; I remember thinking that I could only orchestrate it with any chance of success during the transition to university, with a new audience who knew nothing about my past. For example, not many people believe me when I tell them I used to be super quiet. Not many people believe me when I tell them I used to spend days playing computer games without ever seeing a peep of sunshine. Not many people believe me when I say that I used to hate sport. And nobody believes me when I say that I used to work overtime at Dick Smith and refuse money because I was doing it for personal development (the minimum I demand these days is $35 an hour, direct deposit into bank please =)). Luckily my escape vehicle, the Corvette, was suitable. It was raw. It was forgivingly sexy. If it was a woman she’d be dressed in a sparkling red evening gown with the split up to her thighs and a cocktail held delicately in one hand, eyebrows arched questioningly.

I did many things during this period, some of which were laughable, others cringeworthy. In my first year of university I stepped into leadership of a student organization, encouraged drinking competitions, promoted promiscuity and in some (thankfully few!) instances, landed myself in some very compromising situations. Because I wanted to touch base with girls, I ‘metrosexualised’ my life. As the resident poster boy for my newfound coterie of pimple-faced followers, I felt obliged to become a gossip dissemination hub, matchmaker, facilitator of diffused spontaneity, KPI (key performance indicators – I was in a business club) whipmaster, and a source of constant controversy. In living and breathing the ‘work hard, party hard’ ethos of this organisation, I met every single objective I’d set out for myself at the start of the year. And totally destroyed my life in the process.

Second year of university brought about another transformation and the downfall of my corvette-driven life. My supercharged, liquid-nitrogen propelled trajectory forward was suddenly destabilised by a relatively light crosswind, so to speak. I exited from business (was always going to happen) and into physiotherapy, finally convinced that I didn’t want to do dentistry. I also began to realise how much I’d compromised myself in order to achieve my goals. Popularity was interesting but it wasn’t all it was cut out to be. So what was I looking for, now? I’d tasted leadership and liked the power. I’d mixed with girls and found a much greater depth of understanding and conversation –in some of them, at least – than I had in boys. I liked that. I had pushed the very limits of my promiscuity and found that quite stressful, not only for the unwanted attention, but also because it set me against a lot of other boys (namely the ones with girlfriends, hahaha). I’d become metrosexual and hated it… almost all the girls whose attention I didn’t attract thought I was gay. So what vehicle would I choose for this new (current) era of my life?

Find out in the next post!