Life Is Tough But You Are Tougher

You've got through bad times before - you will get through them again.

People used to call me Mr Jam because they thought I was lucky. I can remember how it started. My brother’s company threw out a mini fridge in the process of moving offices and, somehow, it ended up in my possession. I was sixteen years old and still living at home with my mum. In my bedroom I had an Ikea bed sofa. Now, I had a mini fridge with cans of Fosters stored in it too. Sixteen years old, single with a sofa and a fridge? I was basically Frank Sinatra in his absolute prime. Sophisticated. Mature. Unstoppable.

This was the early nineties when mini-fridges were more glamorous and exclusive than they are today. You couldn’t pick them up off eBay for twenty quid. A mini fridge was the sort of thing you only saw in high-class hotel rooms. In that sense, my brothers were right to label me Mr Jam. I truly did appear to be the luckiest man alive.

The name stuck as I got older and entered the world of work. In my twenties, things went pretty well for me: I seemed to glide from one exciting job to another. I went from magazines to newspapers to radio and then TV. All of which galvanised the Mr Jam myth. I started to resent it a little bit because I really did work hard. It might have appeared to outsiders that good fortune just landed on my lap but I felt that talent and graft played a big part too.

I mean, I realise now that I was also benefitting massively from being white, male and born in London. I wanted to work in the media and I already lived, rent free at my mum’s, within a city where all the jobs were. I get that I have had massive advantages. I probably didn’t fully acknowledge any of that at the time. I was a council house kid from a state school who had elbowed his way into an industry that was dominated by privately educated wankers and Oxbridge dickheads. So I must have been the underdog. But it’s all about context. I had less than some but a great deal more than others.

But all this good fortune meant that when bad luck was eventually visited upon me I was ill-prepared. When I was 35 I quit a well paid, high profile job to return to freelance life. I did this partly because the job consumed so much of my time and energy that I was unable to be a proper dad to my new baby daughter. I also did it because I had grown really tired of having bosses. But what made it easier was that I was inundated with offers of extra-curricular work. I couldn’t keep up with it all. I worked out that I could earn the same - or maybe even more - as a freelancer than I was as a full time magazine editor. Why bust my ass ten hours a day (twelve on press days) and have to deal with irritating management figures when I could earn the same dough at home, be my own boss and get to read my kid a bedtime story every night? It was a no brainer. I quit.

I had three big projects lined up for my first year back as a freelancer. They were lucrative and exciting. They would allow me to reclaim my life. But guess what? One fell through within a fortnight. The next was cancelled inside a month. The third just seemed to fizzle out in that slow, painful way things sometimes do.

Everyone has bad luck from time to time. These days, older and a bit wiser, I tell young freelancers that they should be aiming for a success ratio of one in every five projects they go up for. That’s perfectly realistic. But back in those days I was more accustomed to the rather less realistic aim of winning five in every five projects I went up for. So when I tasted three successive rejections in a short space of time - rejections that were massive, completely unexpected and, in my case, totally unprecedented, I almost fell to pieces.

I had blithely walked away from the security of a salary, burning bridges in the process, with the cocky glee of a bloke who’d had a mini-fridge in his bedroom when he was just 16. I thought that opportunities would simply continue to present themselves to me forever and ever. Was it a sense of entitlement? No, didn’t think that I necessarily deserved all the breaks. I was just used to getting all the breaks. But then Lady Fortune sucker punched me and I found myself on my arse, consumed by dread, panic and plummeting self-esteem. Soon, I was skint. The world seemed to be collapsing around my ears. How would I pay the mortgage? How would I feed my kid? What would everyone say? I felt like Old Gill, the crumpled, hapless salesman out of The Simpsons.

I’m going to fast forward a bit now. I am 46. I am still basically a freelancer. I have ups and downs. I have good months where the work and money seem to flow like water And I have bad months when I struggle to make ends meet. And in the midst of those dry spells I still feel a bit down. I get stressed if a big bill lands. Sometimes my ego feels a bit bruised. But one thing I no longer do is panic. I don’t interpret a slow period as a symbol of total and irreversible decline. I don’t question my own abilities or worry about how other people perceive me. I don’t start planning to sell off the kitchen appliances on eBay. I step back, take a breath, make sure I rest properly and eat well. I exercise. I keep working. I just focus on the next step in front of me.

When the shit seemed to have hit the fan back in my mid-thirties I had not learned these habits. Worse, I had no faith in myself. I was unused to facing adversity. I worried that I didn’t have the strength to navigate my way through tough times.

One of the best things about that period was that I went so barmy with anxiety that I was forced to confront the problem, see my GP, get some therapy and start the journey into self-awareness that, ultimately, has led me here - writing this bollocks down in the hope it might help others who experience the same sort of shit.

I’ve had a couple of bits of bad luck recently. It made me feel shit. But I can cope with feeling shit. I always know it will pass. I find anxiety and fear much harder to cope with. But the way I stave off those feelings is simply to recall all the bad stuff I’ve faced down in the past. As someone clever once said: today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.

I am not saying that everything turns out okay in the end. That bollocks if for corny memes. Shit happens. And sometimes it keeps happening. But when it does I remind myself of all the other bad times that seemed like they might never end. It gives me belief and courage.

Whoever you are, I know you’ll have been through your own stuff. And look at you, you’re still standing. Remember that. Think about all the times it has happened in the past. Think of the break ups, the rejections, the financial blows or the career hiccups that have kicked you in the balls. They felt awful at the time. They might have set you back a few steps. But here you are, still standing - probably wiser and definitely stronger. You are a fighter. All the evidence points to that. You have come this far because whenever life knocks you down you get back up and chuckle in its stupid face. Life is tough - but you are tougher.

Fancy some more?

I now have an extra weekly letter that’s got tons more advice, tips, LOLs and good times. It’s called The Reset Extra and you can subscribe for a fiver a month. You also get early access to the weekly podcast and the chance to contribute to our thriving Reset chat forum (where I learn something new every day).

The Reset Podcast

For some reason, The Reset pod fell off a number of popular podcast apps for a few weeks. If you missed episodes, then remember all the podcasts are available right here on my Substack page for free every week. I have now restored the feed to all the other apps too. The next episode is with my boyhood hero Tony Cottee and will be with all subscribers very shortly.

Some services, links and phone numbers to help you through the tough times

https://www.samaritans.org/ Tel 116 123

@calm 0800 58 58 58

@YoungMindsUK 0800 018 2138

@ChairtySane 0300 304 7000

https://www.alcoholics-anonymous.org.uk/

https://cocaineanonymous.org.uk/

https://andysmanclub.co.uk/