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It’s the evening of January 7th, 2020, and after watching something (probably) on Netflix in bed my eyes start to shut. My wife was already dozing off and I knew it was time to turn the tele off and go to sleep. I leaned over and switched the thing off.
As I got into my comfy position, I lay there ready for a deep slumber. I’m very fortunate in the sense that I fall asleep almost immediately every single night within minutes. I’m told by my wife that after getting into my sleeping position my record for sleeping, as proved by snoring is about 15-20 seconds. She envies me.
However, this night felt different, I couldn’t get to sleep. This wasn’t uncommon it happens every now and again but as I lay there, I thought to myself I’m sure I turned the tele off!? I opened my eyes, and the room was black. Where was the noise coming from? I checked my phone charger connection, the bedside light and anything else I could think off. I surmised that the TV was making a buzzing noise as it wasn’t switched off by the plug. I hopped up out of bed and flicked switch off. Back to bed.
I’d been ill over the Christmas period with a cold. The type a man gets as well, but it dissipated before the new year, and I was back to feeling ok. Sunday the 5th, the day before going back to work I started to feel off again. The same cold or a new one (who can ever know?) started to creep back in and as I lay there in bed trying to sleep, I knew immediately where the sound was coming from. It was coming from my ear!
Everybody has heard of it and most likely at some point had it. Most commonly from going to a gig or a sudden loud bang. Unfortunately for some it never goes away.
Over the next weeks and months my life changed. It’s impossible, I think, to try to understand tinnitus and its impact on your life if you haven’t had it for a considerable amount of time. Those first few months mentally I felt like I’d aged enough for a lifetime. Physically you’re exhausted and you’re just not, ‘there’. You’re stuck in your mind exacerbating the horrible feedback loop that tinnitus provides. Pure mental torture.
Fast forward to now and although I still have it, in both ears it rarely bothers me. I still sleep sound and I’ve found a way to accept it and live with it. There is, however, a fear that it can change in an instance, and at any moment it chooses, to suck the life right out of me. This happened in the first few months of having it when I woke up dazed and confused. I awoke suddenly with a sound in my ear that, not exaggerating, felt like a passenger airline jet was setting off next to me. I scrambled to the toilet holding my head and dropped to my knees. It’s hard to say how long it lasted (I dramatise things quite a lot I’m told) but it was enough for me to know what decision I had to make.
I’d previously been a Royal Marine. They’re different from the American Marines you see in Hollywood movies. We’re also better. We can have an argument about that another time! Wearing ear defenders was compulsory when live firing but you know how it is. The ear defenders are great at muting the sound of gun fire but they’re also very shit at letting you hear your oppo (mate). Because of this you might take one out and leave one in.
Fast forward to my current job, construction management and again I’m exposed to an environment where things go bang. Again, ear defenders are compulsory (one does not want to feel the wrath of the Health & Safety poo-lice) but there are times when you don’t. We’re all stupid humans after all.
Now, one might think that it was a sort of righteous justice from the hearing gods that I got my comeuppance, but my tinnitus started after not working for a few weeks and after spending more time in the site office than on site with tools. My tinnitus came from a common cold and although it could if it wanted to, it never left. The little shit!
Now, the sad part of this story is that between my time in the marines and my construction job now I started to do something I was very fond off. In fact, I’d found something that I ‘felt’ I was meant to do.
I’d ‘found’ music. Not in the literal sense but after a trip to Ibiza I’d decided I was going to be a DJ (I have ADHD, so this is normal for me. Although it would be some 10 years later before I knew I had it. More on that in the future.). There’s something about music that resonates (pun intended) with me more than anything. Over the next 6/7 years I went from mastering the decks (in my opinion) to producing music. I researched and saved all my money, and others to invest in a studio in my loft. I went from buying synthesizers to making my own. I absolutely fucking loved it more than anything and still do to this day. I even had my very own (quite shit) electronic night in Manchester.
The story wraps around to that night in January 2020 when that little buzzing noise crept into my head, and I knew that the career path I’d wanted so badly, and tinnitus weren’t compatible. There are many musicians who have tinnitus and still play and for the first few months I was on and off with it and was over the top careful with noise exposure. I even had a noise DB measurement tool and timed my sessions to 25 minutes before a break. The ‘passenger airline jet’ incident though was the nail in the coffin. I somehow teleported myself 30 years into the future and imagined an old man unable to hear his grandchildren laughing and knew in an instance it was game over. The irony is until recently I’d never dreamt of having kids.
That decision pains me, even today. Was I too rash? Could I control it? The old why me!? (Sad face). I like to remind myself that I’m not unlucky. I am, in fact, lucky. Depending on which source you look at it’s estimated that between 1 and 3% of the world’s population (80 - 240 million) have tinnitus so bad it severely affects their life. 5 - 10% of people have tried to commit suicide, have been successful or have suicidal thoughts. That’s a hell of a lot of people!
I remind myself of those people who aren’t as lucky as me instead of looking to what I don’t have every time the thought crosses my mind. It isn’t always easy though. Upon parking my dream as a musician it’s enabled me to look at other avenues of interest to me. Over the last few years, I’ve earned a level 6 qualification in Construction Management, set up a publishing business and pursued a small box full of online ideas on how to make an extra source of ‘income’. It’s easy right? We’ve all seen the bro YouTube videos on how to make 4 million gazillion dollars a day if you JUST enter your credit card details and purchase my course, I made in my mum’s basement :). I have done this in case you are wondering.
The problem is all these things were just there to fill a hole. I didn’t really want to do any of them. They were just a means to an end. Did I really care about my Etsy store? about my amazon publishing store? They were all masks I was putting on with the only true driving source behind them, making money. Now, I love money and I’ll be honest, I don’t want to be working past my 50’s. My 40’s if I can help it and I don’t begrudge anyone from making obscene amounts of money. In fact, I encourage it. Especially from people where traditional education left them behind. My problem with what I was doing is it didn’t make me happy. I was expecting to just follow a set of rules, sit back and let the money roll in.
Whilst all of this was going on there were genuine things I tried and failed most of the time to cram in and fit around my professional duties and my obsession with jumping from the next quick money hack to another. These ‘other’ interests are reading, working out, crafting cocktails, finance and investing, offering people advice, pushing my mental and physical body, hiking, giving myself 9 weeks to run a marathon after not running for 5 years, how to make the perfect cup of coffee, travel, walks with my dog and wife amongst a few. Oh, and plants. I love plants. Things that I genuinely give a shit about and think about before I go to bed and instantly when I wake up.
Are these not things worth pursuing?
Having ADHD is hard and again, I don’t have it so much that it regularly affects my life and others around me (my wife will tell you otherwise) but having been diagnosed last year at 32 it made a hell of a lot of sense. My tendency to hop from one thing to another, my erratic behaviour, my forgetfulness, my ability to lose things literally in an instance of them coming into my possession. It’s frustrating but at 33 I look back at my life and I must think to myself I have some sort of handle on it. That I somehow cultivate what I have and can use it for good. Sometimes. I’m proud of a lot of the things I’ve done. It’s hard not to think of what my life could have been like if I didn’t have it, but I know I wouldn’t be me without it. When I told my friends I’d been diagnosed they didn’t even look up from their phone.
“Yeah Karl, we know”. Chuckles.
Over the course of this year my effort towards things that offer no immediate satisfaction and are dependent on potential future earnings and things that I care about has swung from one side of the pendulum to the other. The problem was I had all these little baskets of joy and nowhere to put or use them.
Then I found Substack.
I’ve subscribed to many newsletters over the years and found a lot of them of use. I’d never dreamt of doing one of my own though as I’m not an expert on anything nor am I a writer. Spell checks working hard on this one! But something about this felt organic. I wasn’t offering myself out on social media for likes and getting sucked into arguments with the opinion police, it seemed like a place where you could just write down your own thoughts and upload them. A cloud that people can see and read. I’d been on social media when I was trying to do the music thing and it was just a big competition. Maybe I was doing it wrong, but it wasn’t really for me. I was also really shit at it to be fair. I’ll try and be better in the future.
But with my genuine interests and with my ADHD trying to distract me writing this newsletter seemed like the thing I had to do. I get distracted and forget a lot of the stuff I consume but if I have a place to offload my thoughts then they’re there forever. Kind of like social media, but more substance. People on the type of websites like this and newsletters that they subscribe to have a genuine interest in what they follow. Dooms-scrolling, what’s that?
Like I said I like to help people as well. I’m told I offer ‘pretty decent’ advice. What better way to help people than to share with you what I learn? That’s why books are amazing. Kings, queens, slaves, CEOs, sports legends, and ordinary folks’ lives surmised into a weekend (I wish) of reading.
That’s what this newsletter is about. It’s about me. It’s about what interests me. Subscribing to The School of Knowledge is an investment in me and I promise I’m invested in helping every single one of you lead a happier, healthier, and wealthier life.
Karl
The School of Knowledge