About Me — David Williams
What shall I do when I leave school?
You are a small boy, aged four, you are wearing nothing but your wellington boots. In your arms is Jimmy, your favourite teddy bear, and you are standing in the back garden of your family’s home. The date is 20th July 1969. It is a clear night, and you gaze up into the sky, wide-eyed and amazed.
The man in the moon looks down upon you, quite literally, or so it seems to you, for you are convinced that you have just spotted Mr Neil Armstrong, of Apollo 11, climb out of his lunar module and take those famous few small steps that represented such a seismic single step for mankind.
You tell yourself that you will one day follow in his footsteps, and you vow that you too will become an astronaut.
I distinctly recall this, my first significant memory of life, standing there in my garden, staring into the night sky, hoping and believing that I also would one day fly away to the moon. Such was the impact of the moon landings upon my childhood imagination that I carried my astronaut ambitions with me well into my teenage years. I planned to join the Royal Navy as a helicopter pilot, train, work hard, and aim for selection for a future British expedition to the Moon.
And then I was sick, violently so. I was sixteen years of age and had been invited to attend a Royal Navy selection event, part of which involved an opportunity to fly in a Wessex Mk V helicopter, to experience some battle type manoeuvres, and to discover if this is the career I wished to pursue. It had not occurred to me that my lifelong extreme vulnerability to travel sickness, and a thorough aversion to fairground and playground rides, would be the single defining murder implement for my childhood dreams. Yet it was, and that was the end of that.
Here I sit, forty years later, and I continue to remain unsure of what else I could be when I grow up and leave school. I have tried sundry occupations. I have toiled in telecommunications. I have worked in financial services. I have helped in alcohol and substance misuse services. I have taught Scuba. I have some experience as a sports therapist. Yet apart from scuba, which remains a favourite pastime, and my current employment as an electrican, none of these other ventures has ever really gripped and retained me. They have paid bills and for that I am grateful.
By contrast, one lifelong venture continues to grip and thrill me. I was raised in a home with a strong emphasis upon the Christian faith, and as is often the case this experience brought a lifelong influence to bear upon me. I remain devoted to my faith, have served several short periods within a missionary organisation, and commencing in 2003 I studied firstly a bachelors and then a masters degree in Christian Theology. For the past ten years, I have engaged in some part-time tutoring up to masters level, for a wonderful Bible college in partnership with a major UK university.
I have been afforded the opportunity to author two books. The first is an autobiographical account of a period in my life leading up to, and immediately after the removal of a brain tumour. The book is authored with lightness and wit, which perhaps is typical of who I am as a person. The second book is an academic Theology book, which although I am proud of, gave me less writing pleasure than the first.
Alongside these books, I have published a small body of academic journal articles and academic book reviews. I have considered PhD study, but believe I have travelled as far along the academic route as suits me.
I write most days, and although, as one wag put it, 84% of statistics are made up on the spot, I can state without fear of contradiction that 99% of my writing remains strictly for the benefit of myself. I employ a journal app that synchronises between my iPhone, iPad and MacBook, and in here lay my daily observations and other writing pieces. This shall continue to be my primary means of capturing my writing. Yet I would like to get out a little more, or more specifically, permit my writing to do so.
I have only been here on Medium for a few weeks, have penned just three articles, that I have posted here, here and here, and I am slowly figuring out how this platform works. My intentions here are eclectic. I shall likely post short fictional pieces. I shall likely also post what I hope are thought-provoking, inspirational or devotional pieces. Yet I am a man of tangents. I have an overdeveloped tendency to depart along a route that suddenly interests or fascinates me.
I have much more that I could say, to introduce myself and to talk about what I write and why, yet perhaps as a simple introductory piece this will suffice to streak but briefly, comet-like, across the firmament of the readers of this hallowed platform. After all, I have learned the lesson, that in my case at least, shooting for the moon leads to a great spinning of the head.
