Lazily watching sunset after sunset sink into the red mist on the warm beaches of Goa, and soaking up hour after hour of sunshine and cloudless skies in Arambol, Candolim and the more tropical Palolim, the spiritual and multicultural influences of India have been pushing me to think more deeply and complete my next blog entry.
It’s a happier blog entry than some earlier ones and still on the subject of The Hero’s Journey, showing what’s possible for someone who may start life a troubled soul, but … if there is an enquiring mind, a lots of courage and determination … an avid seeker will always find higher ground, sometimes even crossing what I have called “The Bridge of Fire”; that doorway of change where the hero’s worst fears and demons are faced head on and their cognitive structure of everything that life is, and has been, breaks down and rearranges into a very new and very personal perspective on life, but one very much containing the magic for a better and more meaningful life ahead. Like the rebuilding of the jigsaw that I’ve talked about before.
If the journey is survived positively, and there is support to help guide the emerging soul, then healthier values steadfastly lead towards a more successful and nourishing life, better relationships and greater happiness.
And that’s what happened to me.
I’m sure many others of my age and psychological makeup, the Type A’s, who’ve had a breakdown or series of calamities, or traumas, might be able to relate well to my story. This is of course one of the reasons why I write it; to connect with those who have gone through hell, but have found peace in their time. Also those who are still going through their personal hell but need reassurance that a better life ahead is entirely possible with the right intention.
And as I’m currently sitting watching sunrises and sunsets half way round the world, sipping a Pina Colada and watching local fishing boats float by in the distance, without having a schedule to run to or an alarm clock other than the rising sun, I can look back on my own journey with a different attitude and quiet gratitude towards my life and enjoy it in a way that wasn’t visible when I was living in the blood and guts and carnage of every day survival.
In the end I’m proud of my story and I hope I can encourage others to have a similar shared pride, no matter how simple their lives, when they also look back on their own lives with gentler and easier eyes.
I’m proud that I picked myself up time and time again from the pains and drudgery of that younger life, immersed in the struggle of economic survival, the poor choices, the failures, the worry, the depression and the chaos, but always aimed to be the best person I could be. I still shudder a little when I remember the seemingly endless trail of disappointments and disasters that followed me, but I finally got through though. And that, to me, is pretty cool.
Aided by a powerful internal guide of course, from aged three, where I was always pushed to seek the truth, to take the risks, to see round the corners with intuition, no matter what circumstances I found myself in, it’s been a cornerstone of my existence ever since. ( A Spiritual Awakening Aged 3)
I always wanted to know more about the big things in life. I always knew there was more, but what? What is life? Where will it take me? What do I have to do to get out of the rut? What is the universe? What are the real rules? Who am I really? How do I unlock the real me? How do I care best for my family? How or where do I find the mental and physical strength to keep going on through my worst times of suffering? How much am I capable of doing before my body gives up? How do I get rich? How do I achieve Spiritual Enlightenment?
Now, with that calmer hindsight, most of those questions have been answered and I can also understood more of what and why I went through the hardships and the questioning, how the journey took me through a spiritual quest of magnificent proportions until there was nothing left in my head other than darkness and pain, and then an empty space, and then love as the new life was born. But that’s another story, including some incredible events on the way.
Having long since crossed my own Bridge of Fire and recovered, though it took many years, I’m now a happy, resilient, healthy, upbeat personality, with a great history behind me, determined to still make the most of what is left of my life and to share it constructively with others who would also like to do so. Of the seven billion people in this world today I consider that was actually born into a beautiful scenario that was ripe for good education and personal growth, and I now never stop appreciating that. Some difficult or sad things may have happened to me, but it doesn’t make me a sad person, just a person with life’s experience to draw on and grow with. But without the losses or challenges of my own journey I would never have been reduced to the beautifully empty shell that was needed for true spirituality to start shining through, and to experience the exquisite and beautiful physical, emotional and spiritual events that came as a result.
I see now that I had loving parents who did their very best with what they had, I had a sister that cared so much about me, I was born into a system that had high quality education, stable politics, a free national health system, and opportunities for a person to realise their full potential rather than be dominated or suppressed by a violent or oppressive political or state system.
Looking back I can also see it’s a result of those positive influences where my determination to become a better person was nurtured by influences such as the Scouts and my schooling, and the result became a quest for making something truly worthwhile of my life. Thwarted by self consciousness but balanced by an outgoing nature it took me into an adulthood with a growing hodgepodge of the extrovert and the introvert, risk taking and soul searching, snakes and ladders, and eventually to an absolute commitment to make it or break it, and not worry about losing my life in the process if necessary. That was my Hero’s Journey up and onto the Bridge of Fire. Passion, invincibility, curiosity, and a lot of self hatred.
Those values propelled my non-academic body to become a workaholic, searchaholic, a life detective on a path to the stars, and if all was lost at least I had lived a life of trying my very best with what I had. I messed up over and over again, completely over-reached at times and burned out regularly. Learning from failure, trying again and again, embracing risk and courting outrageousness gave me the resilience and determination to punch through my veils of darkness whenever I could and eventually cross over into a new life. As a result, I’ve been successful enough in my working life and achieved enough to satisfy my sense of adventure.
Cast iron determination as a twenty something to become a survivor in my new world of adulthood and fatherhood helped me become part of the one percent that made it through military selection to become a Royal Air Force officer and pilot.
Following that, I spent 16 years serving around the world, achieving over four thousand hours flying on a mixture of twin engined helicopters such as the Puma and Wessex.
Flight operations followed in UK, Northern Ireland, Central America, Brunei, France, Germany, Norway, Denmark, Falklands, Italy and Cyprus, with a host of great stories to recount.
Whilst on Search and Rescue duties on the Sea King helicopter, my crew and I saved the lives of dozens of people in the mountains and on the seas of central UK, including oil rigs, military vessels and civilian cruise ships. I flew Charles and Diana, met the Queen twice, took part in a State Banquet and, most importantly, made my kids proud to have me as a father.
Self-employment started long before I left military employment in the RAF. During my service I ran small businesses, eventually becoming an expert in archival picture and artefact framing. I also saw the opening for personal computers arriving and jumped on the new trend for small business long before it hit mainstream.
On leaving the RAF in 2003, hungry to start my own emotional healing, I became a qualified holistic therapist, passing the course with the highest honours. I provided private physio and health services to my local area from a little beach studio on the Northumberland Coast that I bought with my gratuity when I left the RAF.
Wanting to share what I had learned in the new computer technology of the early 90s, I took a risk to start provide adult learning classes in IT and started a training company, Heritage IT, winning the contract to provide IT support and training to civilian and service personnel at my old RAF Station, RAF Boulmer.
I remained there for 16 years, constantly re-winning the contract, teaching thousands of servicemen and civilians in the use of programs such as Microsoft Office.
As my IT and programming skills developed I went on to design a security program that electronically monitored the RAF base callout program, and developed many advanced marketing databases and monitoring programs for businesses in the North-East.
In 2004 at the age of fifty, I still had an immense energy for life. Whilst still teaching, I wanting to spend more time in the outdoors, so I started an extreme sports business, Northern Freestyle, covering the whole of the North East with a shop, website and training facilities that would introduce the new sports of powerkiting, kitesurfing and kiteboarding to the area. Within a year I became the highest grossing agent for Flexifoil equipment in UK.
As a lead instructor I taught students in the new sports and reached standards of competence that surpassed that of men thirty years younger than myself. I had learned the ability to hide away and practice, practice, practice many years before and take any punishment needed in order to succeed. I came close to accidentally killing myself on a few occasions and broke more bones in five years than I had done in the whole of my active life, but it was all worth it. I felt like I had shrugged off all my self-limiting beliefs of my former life and was able to live life to the full.
In 2008 aged fifty four I retired from teaching and sports, and started an aerial photography business, having built my own remote control (RC) aircraft to capture large areas of the local coastline for survey purpose.
I wanted to know how much of the frontage of my beach house was being eroded, so I fitted a Digital SLR that was capable of high resolution photography into it. Next came the unique move to put an autopilot in the aircraft to assist with stability, unaware that I was on the cutting edge of drone civilian drone technology, and still five years ahead of the future drone market. It was a process bugged with a thousand issues, but I persevered, sometimes suffering five crashes a day and having to build a new research drone every month.
It paid off though.
In 2011, aged fifty seven, my fledgling drone business became a registered manufacturer of sub 7kg drones, with my first customer being the European Space Agency working on a Mars Rover project in the Atacama desert in Peru.
My aircraft design proved completely successful despite having to fly at 10000 feet and belly land on the rugged red, rocky surface without damage. Within three years the company was exporting the design worldwide and by its cessation ten years later in 2020, the products were in over 70 countries and on every continent including the Arctic and Antarctica.
In 2012 aged fifty eight, having won many research contracts with UK universities including Cambridge, Kings College London, Exeter, Newcastle, Edinburgh and many more, I designed and manufactured a new scientific NDVI Infra Red Camera capable of identifying plant health from a small autonomously operated drone. This lead me in 2013 to being awarded the “Fox Talbot” award for scientific photography by the British Institute of Professional Photography. This was the Institute’s top award, only granted every three years. Having only been in the Institute for six months, it was an all time record to receive this and a lifetime Fellowship of the BIPP, it’s top membership award.
In 2013 my company also scooped outright winners for North East Companies for the Business Innovation Award, New Business Startup and Top Small Business in the North East Business Awards.
In 2015 the newest version of our drone design, the Questuav 300, competed on a global stage with 12 other major commercial drone manufacturers from around the world. Top drone companies from Australia, France, Switzerland, Israel, USA, Finland and Germany were amongst the bidders vying for the coveted South Korean survey contract with LX (equivalent of the Ordnance Survey Company in UK).
The resulting image of ours, which covered a 1sq km of rural area in South Korea, electronically combined 1500 images and 18 billion pixels, with each pixel having a known location to within 3cm accuracy of where it existed in real-time on the earth’s surface. It was an exercise filled with drama and heart stopping events, but the final image and mathematical model was a dream to watch come true.
As a result, South Korea, a hugely competitive country that is named as the most innovative country in the world in the Bloomberg Innovation Index, and a country that hosts big names like Samsung and LG, my company called QuestUAV by then a relatively small, but advanced UK company, we secured a lucrative three year contract to provide drones to South Korea and then set the standard for drones technology in the civilian industry in South Korea.
Our never ending challenge to stay innovative and remain ahead of the competition was tough, but having the courage to take big risks, we pushed forward relentlessly spending seventy percent of our budget on research and development.
The wins for the company continued to come in, though the failures were also massive sometimes.
Whilst working on Pineapple plantations in Asia, we were able to reduce soil loss from 200 tonne per hectare to 18 tonnes per hectare, combining the imagery taken from our drones that plantation staff used with 3D land management programs. This effectively turned the five year lifespan of a plantation into a plantation with an infinite lifespan. It was a success that didn’t bring any real money in, but one that really focussed on what I was trying to achieve: bringing good to the world in any small way that I could through the application of what personal resources I had; trust, truth, energy, resilience, determination, agility, application, innovation and working outside the box.
Our drones proved their robustness when operating with special forces in Ukraine on the Russian border. The very expensive Sheibel drone competitors, costing a quarter of a million dollars each, were all too regularly being shot down or suffering jamming and crashing. We were approached to provide something more robust, which we did. Ours survived the AK47 gunfire and jamming without a hitch.
In one incident caught on camera, 4 bullets from a Russian sniper penetrated a QuestUAV 300. Not only did the drone continue flying, but it returning to base as programmed, ready to fly many more sorties.
Another of our drones landed in bad weather in a minefield on the border and spent two months languishing there in the vicious Russian winter, before it could be recovered. Once recovered, after a few simple checks, it was passed as fit to fly again.
Robustness was our keyword, and it proved to be a success. No surprise that key words to my life were being put out there in the real world, like Quest and Robust and Agility.
Our designs were proven in many other harsh environments around the world.
The mountains of Peru, the remote forests of Cambodia, moraines of Antarctica, polar bear country of the Svalbard and the Artic, technically starved and poverty struck regions of Africa, the heat of Australian outback, earthquake zones in China, glaciers in the Alps.
By 2016 the company was turning over one million pounds annually, received many coveted research awards, had twenty highly skilled employees, and four establishments around the North East including offices for design, research, manufacturing, sales and training.
It was a great success story and we were often heroes of the local community, being a world class tech company operating from a rural community in the least populated county in England.
But now I’ve moved on, retired, and just have memories and images left. I’ve since bought a few things that bring me joy, notably a campervan and motorbikes, and started travelling and meeting people solely for pleasure, rather than business. And most importantly, continuing the biggest journey of all; the journey to the centre of my hearts and to be the best and happiest person I can be with whatever time I have left.
Time now to finish my coffee, put my hat on, take my ancient and well worn Merrells boots off, step onto the hot sands of the beach, and have a paddle in the warm waters of the Indian Ocean.
Next:
Love is an Action 
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