Journalled on Tuesday, 18th of April 2023-4 Days to My Birthday| Copacabana, Rio de Janeiro: 28 degrees, a little hot, sunny and slightly cloudy.
Tuesday, four days before my birthday, and I am still broke. I have R$50 to my name, roughly U$10 or £8.
This is an internal battle that I am facing at the moment- well, for a long time, to be exact. At 57, living the way I do isn’t what I planned when I was young. When I was young, I imagined myself to be reasonably successful at 25 and with a Ferrari at 30.
When I arrived in Brazil, people considered me a genius for my age because of what I knew about boats and the yacht-building industry. Beyond my industry knowledge, people commented on my drive and willpower to succeed and achieve my goals.
What went wrong?
What did I do wrong? Have I been fooling other people and, principally, myself all this time? Has it all been a joke, and not realised it until now? Have I only now learned what is needed to be successful at almost 57?
Have I been playing with my life all this time?
At the beginning, I was working on boats and had closed an important deal in São Paulo, butit all went wrong. Not so much due to me or the project itself, but to the person who had bought the project and did not know how to develop it properly.
It was a project that could have put his business on another level in the Brazilian market and in other countries. Still, he did not know how to appreciate and respect the professionalism necessary to realise its full potential, so it never took off.
And my beautiful and special English school: The Right Way English School Ltda. Why did I have a school/course? Why wasn’t I happy and content to give classes and pay the bills? Why did I want to rewrite the didactic methodology?
Why did I demand so much from the classes, and why didn’t the school grow and expand? Why couldn’t I get more teachers to work for me for prolonged periods so that the school could become a force in English teaching? Why wasn’t I able to do this?
Everybody who studied at the school loved the school and the classes. They loved me as a teacher; they felt that what they paid each month was fair, serious, valid, and worth it. They felt they were learning and did not want to transfer to other schools to continue learning.
The school was very proactive for its pupils, combining a mixture of English and cheap psychology.
Many ex-pupils returned to study at the school after a long absence, saying that they either tried to study at other schools for some reason and couldn’t adapt, or they were used to my way of tuition and told that they only felt that they had learnt something through my way of classes at The Right Way.
So why am I at 57 without my own home, without a car, no bank account and wholly fucked now? The only thing that keeps me focused is knowing that my youngest daughter depends financially and intellectually on me.
What do I have to do at 57? What have I not been doing or doing wrong for the last 56 years? What a fuck up, and what do I have to do to change it?
The rest of the day was contemplation and classes.
In bed by 9.30 p.m.
Thank you.
Thanks for reading my blog. Check out my other posts and share your thoughts in the comments.
Richard
