Greetings from the darkside

i am a 40 something session musician and wordpress guru. From humble beginnings i have left my mark on life, born with a degenerative condition that claims its victims in thier 30s i count myself lucky to have come this far, always overcoming and adapting to the challenges it puts on my life. I am a native Slovakian that was raised in Scotland since 4 years old where i was raised on the tough east end streets of Glasgow. As a teenager i realised my life would go nowhere from there so i joined the royal navy where i stayed for 8 years, travelling the world as a radar technician, but my condition got the better of me and at the age of 24 i was discharged due to medical reasons... rather than return to the place i hated so much growing up i decided to choose a random place in the uk to live by sticking a pin into a map, i ended up just outside of Brighton and despite moving around a lot in the last 5 years or so ive firmly cemented my roots in the south of England. As a child and teenager my escape from life was music, i played keyboards and drums (not sat the same time) to escape the horrors of my hometown (if you knew the east end of Glasgow in the 90s thn you know exactly what i mean). After leaving the Navy i furthered my musical roots by starting up some bands, but my real calling in music was as a session player, working with new artists, working with different genres, not being pidgeonholed with a strict set at every gig. if i wasnt on the road i was in the studio until my condition started deteriorating rapidly, this situation wasnt helping me. i was in constant pain, mentally and physically, i stopped caring about everything. I started using ketamine to blank it out, it was ok to begin with i would only use it if i really had to, then came the recreational use and before i knew it i had a bona fide heavy drug habit, my life revolved around the drug, it affected my working situation so badly that i had once again stopped caring about everything. After almost 2 years of daily use I locked myself away from the world, switched off my phone and disconnected from the internet to ensure i had no access to ketamine, 2 weeks later i emerged, no cravings, the addiction was gone. Now it was time to get life back together. In the years that followed i realised that music was not going to pay the bills and it would put me dead centre in the drug scene again, so i opted for a career change, having previous experience with php and html i joined a small group of web developers to hone my skills before venturing out independently to make a living from it, i started enjoying life again. Still on the south coast i had no family and very few friends that were not involved in drugs so i became kinda isolated from the world. I could go as long as 6 weeks without uttering a single word to another living person. All my communication with others was done by text or email. I had spent so many years living alone that it was like second nature to me, i only ventured outside if i really had to, even then i always kept a low profile, i was no longer a social hand grenade, i had exceeded the expectancy of my life span, i over analyzed my situation as borrowed time, i could die any day now in my sleep and because of my isolation no one would ever know, or even know who to contact in the event it did ever happen, it made me feel low, depressed, life hadnt been kind over the last 7 years, granted the drug problem was of my own doing, i accept all responsibility there but just how my personal life had worked out, all the people i cared about had passed away, i have one sibling who has his own fucked up life and hes not really a person of responsibility. I knew what it felt like to be truly alone in the world when times got tough, but last year, a year to the day infact, life actually picked up again, I met an amazing woman, sure we have had ups and downs but all couples do... im still sick, i always will be butt now i have someone that understands how it affects my daily life, im still on what i class as borrowed time since living to 40 something with this illness is rare, but perhaps i found the rock id always searched for? Im back making music, im developing again and im drug free (apart from a bit of weed now and again), i get less attacks of my illness and most importantly im still here to share this with you....

visit me again in 40 years for the second chapter ;)