About Me

I’m your host for this particular blog. I go by the name of Ste. Stephen, if I’m introducing myself to parents, professionals or women.

As you can probably tell, I like to write. Not as often as I like to be honest – in fact, if you go through my blog, you’ll see huge gaps where I’ve not bothered to update and just let significant changes in my life pass by without a single brief moment of stopping and recording the event. It’s not a bad thing, I can’t think of anything worse than telling people worldwide that I’m in the middle of learning a huge life lesson which is currently battering my head and crushing my soul =o)

So, as I sit here updating my ‘About Me’ page, numerous things pour through my head. “Should I tell them about my most recent/current dilemma/drama?”, or “What’s actually interesting about me that I could tell the world about?”. I think we’ll opt for the latter.

I never used to write as well as I do now. This blog was originally started as a way for me to document my trip to Thailand in 2008 but has since served me almost like a diary. I did well in English Literature in high school but miserably in everything else. I had no interest in sitting down in a classroom environment and studying so after experimenting with college, I packed away my pens and f*cked education off. At least for now. I bobbed and weaved in and out of go nowhere jobs earning nowhere near enough and since leaving college, I have achieved nothing to be proud of.

Currently in my mid twenties, I have no direction in life other than to not be stuck doing something I hate. People always try to be different. But no matter how hard they try to do something nobody else has tried to do before – soon they’ll realise, it’s been done by somebody else. The way you dress, act or places you visit. If you decide to up and leave, move to a foreign country because you don’t want to be stuck doing the same stuff everyday – it’s been done. Maybe you don’t care if somebody else has done it before – the point I’m getting to is not caring that other people have done it before. Just do it your own way.

I currently contribute to a large Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) publication and landed that after helping a friend out who I train with and works for the magazine. In fact… this contributory role has helped me to continue writing. It also allows me to travel internationally and do things a normal civilian wouldn’t do. “What did you do Saturday night?”, “Oh nothing, I sat cageside and watched as 2 men duked it out til one of them got choked unconscious…”.

Which brings me to MMA. Mixed Martial Arts plays a huge part in my life. Training intensity varies throughout the year but the frequency does not. 6 days a week, sometimes 7 – I slug it out in the gym, side by side with like-minded people who do it not as a hobby but as something they’re completely devoted to. Something they feel so passionate about, they spend every night in a matted out, testosterone filled basement gym applying choke holds, joint locks and punching/kicking each other until they feel physically and mentally drained. But it stimulates them so much – they do it all again.

Normal people don’t understand this. Nobody in their right mind would want  to put on a gi and roll around on the floor with other sweating men but it’s not sexual. No matter how weird it looks. It’s all about testing yourself. Taking yourself out of your comfort zone and pushing your body to it’s absolute limits and hating yourself when you take a day off to do something completely pointless like sit in front of a glowing box which pumps useless information into your brain and killing off cells. Your whole life is pointless unless you push yourself to see how far you can go.

I have a deep rooted hatred for ‘lager louts’. People who insist on getting absolutely obliterated on alcohol then convince themselves that being lairy is something that impresses the general public. This all stems from my 5 year ‘sentence’ spending my teens in the good old inbred town of Padiham, Burnley in Lancashire. To this date, Burnley only exists because nobody wants to venture in there to blow it up for fear of catching some sort of horrible disease. Given, to look at, it’s not that bad of a place. Surrounded by hills, grass, farms and old buildings which you won’t find in a city – it’s also filled with the type of racist mutants who you wouldn’t want to wipe down with your dirtiest kitchen rag.

But it’s all fun and games. For if I were to grow up in a posh, middle class, clean place such as Wilmslow – I wouldn’t be the person I am now and I wouldn’t despise the same things nor love the same people. Things happen for a reason and the reason for you reading this blog? Well… it’s not guidance let’s put it that way.