ANDREW WATERHOUSE’S BLOG

Teamwork Makes The Dream Work

I don’t know who reads these blogs.

For one, its open to the entire internet.

Second, I don’t promote it and third, I hardly ever blog.

But you know what? It’s something I like to do. I like to write. It gets my brain going, remembering, journaling. Did you know I’ve released There’s No Place Like Summer Camp? 😉

The risk of writing though, is that anyone could read this. Someone important, someone famous, or heaven forbid one of my friends.

The other day, I was walking through Manchester Piccadilly and found myself welling up. I was on my way to the office, like any other Tuesday. Nothing out of the ordinary had happened to me. No heartbreak, pain, stress, or death. So, what was it? Why was I tearing up?

To answer that, I need to elaborate and show you a little behind the curtain.

From my late teens to mid-twenties, there are photos of me where few know my story. Friends that look at pictures of me from this time, laughing at the situations they found myself in. When I look back at the same photos, my heart skips beats, and my palms sweat – I know how depressed and lost I was. Sure, the photos are funny at face value, but scratch the surface and I had problems.

I’m 29 as I write this, and I must say that only when I was 28 onwards, did I come to recognise the twenties for what they were. The twenties are a period of finding yourself. They were a time of finding what you want to do after the shackles of education are behind you, where do you want to go with your life and who do you want to spend it with?

The funny thing is the first half of my twenties weren’t much like that. I was scrambling for those answers.

Leap of Faith

It wasn’t until I took the plunge to shift myself up to the North West that I started to find my groove. Fast forward 5 years later, and I’m still here, baby.

The reason? Natasha.

It was only after sticking out a stay in Manchester after my close friend had returned to Hertfordshire that she remarked “I worry that you’ve only stayed up here because of me”. Natasha was after fretting that I was missing out on significant time with the family, of whom I’d left down south.

It dawned on me; she was right. Natasha had been a stable rock, of whom I craved for in the years of my early to mid-twenties. I had met Natasha during a stint of dates as I found my feet up north. I wasn’t seeking a girlfriend, but it just so worked out that we kept coming back to each other. She was worried that she was keeping me from going back to Hertfordshire. But subconsciously to me, she was always where I wanted to be.

When my friends would come to visit, I was surprised that I had this important person in my life, that they knew little about. For she would make my weekends and we would never get bored of each other’s company. We made each other happy.

So what is the point of this blog?

I’m going to be a dad!

I’ve long been around the age where social networks are chocca-bloc of weddings, house purchases and babies. Well, as Lizzo puts it, “It’s about damn time!”

I am so excited. Here’s my reaction to when I was broke the news on the 1^st of June!

When I heard the news, I was stunned. In that video above in the restaurant, my life wasn’t about me anymore. It was about this third yet to be born person and the person that I had fallen for all these years. I was now protector of our family and protector of our little secret.

Since we’ve learned the due date is approx. 22^nd January and we’ve both decided to not know the gender till its born. It’s the greatest surprise anyone can have in their lives, so we aren’t doing a gender reveal just for some social media clout.

You will rarely see me post to social networks anymore. I even resist the temptation of scrolling Facebook and Instagram like the zombie plague it turns us to. The ego I had from my twenties has dwindled. I’ve learned to be grateful, without showing my life off to make other people compare their lives to mine. And that brings us full circle to the start of this blog post.

Why was I crying in Manchester Piccadilly?

I was overcome with emotion while on my commute to work because I recognised that I was happy. Its hard to even write about it now because it was such a normal yet overwhelming moment. And that was what I had craved for in all the years I had depression, normality.

I crying because I was happy that I had Natasha that I could be myself with, whom was fantastic for my wellbeing and is my best friend. I was happy that I was on my way a job that I enjoy, grow within, and find real purpose from. I was happy with the work-life balance I had and that for that morning, the depressive thought of jumping in front of the tracks didn’t cross my mind.

Depression isn’t something that I wish to battle again. I talk about it in the past tense because of the arms-distance relationship I like to keep with it now I have it under-reins. But to have that morning where I could consciously recognise that I was happy, was all I wanted for years.

And now I’m going to be a dad. I can’t wait.

A Response to my “Where Do You See Yourself in 5 Years’ Time?” from 2017

In 2017 I wrote a blog titled ‘Where Do You See Yourself in 5 years’ time?’ and guess what, it’s been five years since that blog. So what better time than now to give it a read over and give my reaction to where I have gone within those five years.

The article, which I read in my latest episode of There’s No Place Like Summer Camp (you can listen here on Spotify), turned out to be more of a guiding set of principles, rather than about actual tangible goals to be honest. It was a discussion piece about how so many people nowadays are consumers of a capitalist world. How do people do their 9-5 only to be a consumer on the weekends. It is so rare that I’d look around and think others around me would be adding anything to the world, only being a customer of it. I must say, that I stick by that viewpoint. I don’t think I see that changing anytime soon. For some, that is how they are brought up. It’s in the DNA of who they are. It is what they enjoy.

But I think for me, it has to be my way of working. I empathise with Fearne Cotton’s Happy Place podcast, where she often says how if she isn’t being productive in some way, it feels like she may as well not be on this planet at all. I get that, it’s how I run. It is who I am, and isn’t something I would change. I would just love to see that ambition a little more in the general public.

So What’s Changed?

When I wrote the 2017 blog post, I had That’s Your Best Bet. It was a casino website that provided comparisons of bonus sign up offers for some of the biggest bookmakers in the UK. In 2019, I decided to close its doors, as the regulatory picture was changing at such a pace, that a solo entrepreneur couldn’t maintain a reputable casino-type website without having a poor experience for its customers. You can read more about that decision here: Dare to Fail.

There’s No Place Like Summer Camp was coming along well back in 2017. It had been just shy of a year on work of the book. I had taken it from a diary into a physical book that I could make iterations upon. Fast forward to 2022, and the book has been released! It’s available here on Amazon by the way… 😉

It would be six years of work and wrapping my head around becoming an author until my debut book would release. It showed that my determination and ambition weren’t going to let this book fall by the wayside. I had a story to tell – I was doing this for me. To achieve my goals of producing content rather than always being a consumer.

The journey of having the book produced was one of great satisfaction. It is similar to the pictures you see online where someone has stacked hundreds of ladders at the base of a stage, only for one to finally reach the top. It was no smooth, easy ride to release a book.

My projects continue to evolve, as I seek to grow within myself.

Travel Problems

In my 2017 blog, I mentioned a great deal about my desire to travel the world more. And that certainly was influenced by the fact of writing a travel book, based on my time at summer camp. Most days since 2017, I was spending my time refining my memories, telling the story of how awesome it is to volunteer through a program like Camp America. It naturally made me reminisce about the stories that I had forgotten, or find the best, most true way to promote how awesome it is to volunteer abroad in The States.

Since that time, I’ve been fortunate enough to travel. There was a coach tour of Europe that I travelled solo through Contiki. That allowed me to see many sights that few get to experience, such as The Leaning Tower of Pisa, The Colosseum, the Eiffel Tower and the canals of Venice to name but a few. Then something called Coronavirus happened, and the world ground to a halt. Few could have seen that coming and the devastating impact it had on the world for those two years (and still to this day). But with the close friends I still have from summer camp, I was thrilled to travel with them also, to Prague in 2020.

There is a part of me that wishes I was able to travel to Australia for a gap year. Now the background of why that wasn’t possible, is for an entirely different blog post, perhaps even a book. But I am grateful for all the travels that I have been able to say I’ve experienced when it is such a closely held passion of mine.

How Does My Five Year Plan From 2017 Hold Up?

In my 2017 blog, I said I’d want a big fancy car, paying off a mortgage in a job I love.

In 2017, I was in a crash that totalled my car. I had my arm twisted to get a new car, and I’ve been able to pay that off. It’s full of the mod-cons and is doing the job for which both Natasha and I need – to get us from A to B, with Spotify on, air-con and five doors. So that’s a tick, albeit one I wasn’t foreseeing coming the December of 2017.

As for the house? Well, recently we’ve been on the hunt for a home of our own. For years, I’ve been renting and it was about time that we got on to the property ladder. Now, it is easy to look back to these times and think about all the money that’s gone down the drain. But instead, I look back at these times as a period of growth. It allowed me to save up, and find someone that I want to share a home and a family with. This time allowed us both to grow and know what we want, and where we want to live.

Being a regular renter, it is hard to have the rug pulled from your feet, but the flexibility of renting is what makes it attractive. I’ve been able to live in 3 properties all around the North West, each with its type of lifestyle. And most recently, the landlord of which I’m writing this article has said they want to sell their home, so we need to get out. So that’s a bit shit.

So mortgage-wise, we’ve not got one quite yet. We are in the market actively looking for properties that tick the boxes for us.

The job ambitions have certainly been hit.

In 2017, I was stuck. For after summer camp, I was stuck in IT Support positions. After my first summer, I applied to a school as an IT Technician so I could volunteer in the summer of 2015. When I returned from my second summer of volunteering, anyone that would look at my CV would pigeonhole me to only IT Support positions. And that remained the case, more so when I moved up north. The more I switched roles, the more recruiters and companies would keep me boxed, doing something I didn’t have my heart in.

Now, since. Since it’s a different story.

With the passion I have for web design, creativity and trying new things in side-hustles, I was able to break myself away from IT Support to doing websites that I love. Now, in 2022 I’m the Operations Manager for Greenlight Web. I’m steering the ship of a business and I am very happy with the responsibility.

Where do I see myself in 2027?

Man, just writing 2027 is weird. By that time, I’ll be 34. That’s old.

Hell, even when I turned 21 back in the day, I felt old. And I felt even older when I turned 27. Well, duh, that’s how ages work…

But at 34, if I am not in a home of my own, I’ll be questioning my progress. I’d love to have a child or two. The rush to marriage could be there also? But as I’ve got older, the pressures that modern millennials have been proven on my shoulders too. The cost of a marriage doesn’t align with what I’m also trying to do with a family and a home. So the purpose of marriage comes into question: whether I’m doing it for me, or those around me.

It’s a real problem that the modern world is facing today. There’s a crisis of inflation as I write this, where prices are breaching a 10% inflationary rate every month. The cost of living is skyrocketing and wages aren’t matching. The COVID pandemic added wood to a fire, and government money printing (did you know ~80% of the money was printed in 2020?!) only made the inevitable recession worse? I think there will be undeniable fraud across a wide spectrum of finance, and crypto will be leading the charge away from this FIAT currency, where your bank account only gets weaker.

I think that’s about it for what I want in the next 5-year chapter, to be honest.

I’m in a job I love – trusted by a fantastic team where I feel my growth and responsibility to lead. It’ll be an interesting 5 years for sure – will it be a boy or girl? Will my family make the move up north to join me on this journey? Who knows. All I can do is remain curious.

Till the next five years,

Treat Others How You’d Like to Be Treated

It’s been a while since I last blog posted! Plenty has changed since 2019. Who would have thought a freaking pandemic would cause the whole world to come to a screeching halt, especially in the days of modern technology.

When news first broke about the requirement to socially distance and work from home, I posted the following tweet:

Are you jumping for joy that there’s Coronavirus lockdown? What does that say about your life? On average, 50% of your day is spent at work. I think a lot of people have a chance to change their paths and consider if the life they once led was the one they truly wanted.

Proof: My Tweet

I wrote that tweet back in March at the start of lockdown, where my family was celebrating having a few weeks off from their jobs working at school. Their reaction rubbed me up the wrong way, with phrases like “Imagine if you were a school kid, how amazing would corona be?”, inferring that ‘summer off feeling’ to be the same as a pandemic shutting their place of work. While that mentality held true for a week or two, a month into lockdown, they hated it. They wanted to be back in the swing of things. Their days lacked a cause and although wages were still coming in, there was nowhere open to spend it.

Living with regrets

Fast forward to June and my grandad passed away. It was tough to take. My inspiration, my grandfather, a light in my life gone. After 27 years’ worth of memories together, he had left us for a better place. I was fortunate enough to say my goodbyes, a privilege that few get. It had been coming, which meant that when he passed, despite the sucker-punch, I felt at peace. My mentality was he’s no longer suffering and I knew I made all the effort to make the most of our time we could have. Each visit, I knew could potentially be the last.

The reason his death comes up in this post is because of a strange situation I found myself in afterwards. Weeks before the death in the family, I informed my small, profitable, and forward-thinking workplace of his deteriorating health situation. Now he had gone, I needed time to process before I could go back to the slog. The response back was… well. I’d have to use my holiday allowance to take the time I needed to grieve. Talk about kicking someone while they are down.

I dutifully replied to say I wouldn’t be taking allowance as its not a holiday in the slightest. For the company I helped to forge from a startup to a small business, we came to the arrangement I’d use unpaid leave to grieve for a family member.

What was stark in the family, was the difference between those treated like a number and those of whom employers cared for their employees. For instance, members of the family that loved to be away from the school in lockdown were being asked to come in the day after my Grandad’s death. I quote “You need to learn the difference between the death of a father and grandfather” as was put to my brother by his headteacher, as she reasoned why my aunt had more lenient time off.

Grieving and now offended, we sat in the garden for the majority of the three days we spent as a family. Each of us flabbergasted how in 2020 these practices are welcomed by the government. While searching for answers, I found their guidance on bereavement policy was piss-poor. “There is no statutory bereavement leave in the UK. Employees can take a “reasonable” number of days off as time off for dependants but this time is to deal with an emergency situation, including the death of a dependant.” That’s right, there is no requirement for any days at all for death in the family. I understand there is a fine balance to be made here and can be a touchy subject. For instance, who determines which family members or even friends constitute a certain time off work? In this societal mess we have today, often the structure of a nuclear household doesn’t stand as strong today. I’m not arguing that there are other touchy questions too like perhaps it could be better to be back in the office and at what point does an employer become a counsellor?

In a time where mental health is spoken more publicly in the media when it comes to the darkest corners in life, our bereavement laws just don’t stand up.

There must be a balance nowadays for employers taking care of employee welfare. I shouldn’t have to visit a doctor to be diagnosed with stress or depression to simply have a meaningful allowance to grieve.

Thankfully, I can look back during this time with no regrets. I treated my Grandad how I’d like to be treated. I treated my employer how I’d like to be treated in their shoes, but I got spat in my face.

The better you treat people, the fewer regrets you will have as you treated that person with respect to how you’d like to be treated yourself.

What was ironic was how members of the family who celebrated the school during lockdown were treated. They had to drag their heels back into work and the headteacher I mentioned earlier, staggers belief she still has a job. Spending those few days together as a family, we openly discussed how appalling we were each being treated. We were treated like a number, to complete a job. Referring back to my tweet at the start of lockdown, do I want that in my life?

As a reminder, I wrote “Are you jumping for joy that there’s Coronavirus lockdown? What does that say about your life? On average, 50% of your day is spent at work. I think a lot of people have a chance to change their paths and consider if the life they once led was the one they truly wanted.” At the time, glad for the position I held. But business finds its way to irritate and politics to get in the way of career progression. I was sick of promised never-to-arrive benefits and broken promises. I seized the chance to change my career.

Fast forward just two months, and we each have new positions

My aunt, offended by her employer’s attitude towards her nephew swiftly left her position as a teaching assistant. She was snapped up by a new school, surrounded by happy and engaged staff.

My brother handed in his notice last week and is about to start his PE teaching career on a fresh footing.

As for me, I’m about to start my dream job as a Web Designer.

I can only speak for myself, but when I handed in my notice on Monday just gone, my employer was taken aback. One of the first employees they had hired, who put much of the work into where they are today was leaving with his head held high. The roles and responsibilities I have picked up will be further diluted into those who remain to be treated as second class. The revolving door of business simply doesn’t care.

Which, brings me to a conclusion in a rambling, yet direct blog post. The better you treat people, the fewer regrets you will have as you treated that person with respect to how you’d like to be treated yourself. It’s a fantastic mantra to follow in all works of life and in business too, a phrase that popped into my head while on my lockdown walks. It’s not that I’m asking for the world, it’s asking for a progressive and trusting workplace. There’s a brilliant book recommended to me during my time working at Disney Interactive. It’s called Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose by Tony Hsieh. I highly recommend giving that a read to show how a business should treat its people – they are the foundation of where businesses are today.

Whenever I have left a job, often I am offered a counter-offer to stay. Whether that be more money, more responsibilities, or a fresh job title… I’m afraid by then, the damage has already been done. Often you see companies try to make amends where they haven’t done the right thing at the start. If you treat people how you’d like to be treated, then you should have very few regrets. The same goes for business.

I finish this blog post with a brilliant video from the great Steve Jobs. It happened to be posted to my LinkedIn feed while I wrote this, by the man I learned a lot of wisdom from while at Disney Interactive, Matt Carroll, now COO of Sports Interactive. I think sometimes, things aren’t a coincidence. And whether you have seen the below before or not, give it the 15-minute watch it deserves. That spark of inspiration may be just what you need today.

In closing, I’m about to pull myself from the despair you often find in IT Support and I couldn’t be happier. Treating my employers with the utmost respect and creating them stunning websites beyond my job description brought me here. I know there are bigger problems in the world than climbing the career ladder during this time. But if you look back on your life with a huge number of regrets, what kind of a life did you lead? Stand up for yourselves, because no one else will.

Till the next time folks, I’m about to start my dream job!

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