TRANSPERANCY: WHAT HAPPENS AFTERWARD

If you’re meeting me for the first time, the first thing you’ll notice is that I’m difficult to put into a category. I’m a writer, entrepreneur, ambitious, disabled, “hilarious,” an educator, creative thinker, idealist, storyteller and unapologetically an ideas person — but none of these labels quite capture me either, wholly. You see, I have an unusually restless mind; I can flip-flop a lot, become distracted by shiny things, easily fall into a new project, only I believe this is because I’m so passionate as well as inquisitive. I love diversity too.

Haha, grrr, because I want to experience it all.

I’m constantly asking questions, pulling ideas apart, joining seemingly unrelated things together and wondering whether there might be a better, funnier, more useful or simply more interesting way of doing something.

Conversation with me rarely stay where they started.

Yet, there is also a seriousness behind the creativity, the ambition. My perspective has been shaped by more than two decades of living with circumstances that most people could barely imagine having to navigate – full blown quadriplegia.

Dependence, humiliation, loss, care staff (like I’m a business these days), physical restriction, mental trauma – I feel the weight.

This experience has given me a particularly nuanced understanding of adversity. I don’t romanticise it, I don’t belittle it, and I certainly don’t pretend that everything happens for a reason.

Instead, I have developed a fascination with what happens afterwards (after a catastrophic event) — how people reconstruct identity, purpose, relationships, ambition and meaning when the life they expected is no longer available to them. Oh boy, how I can relate. And, much of what I create these days is ultimately an attempt to explore that question – what happens afterwards?

But don’t mistake that seriousness for solemnity. I also have a mischievous streak and a fairly healthy disrespect for unnecessary seriousness. I enjoy absurdity, humour, good bullshit, unconventional ideas and finding the interesting angle that everyone else has overlooked.

I can even move from discussing something deeply philosophical to coming up with a completely ridiculous business idea within the same conversation – and do this almost daily — and somehow both discussions make sense. These contrasts are part of my personality: thoughtful without wanting to be pretentious, ambitious without taking myself too seriously, and capable of finding humour in places where other people might only see difficulty.

Then, I am also a builder. I’m not particularly comfortable leaving an idea as just an idea.

Actually, hot tip, being a builder goes a very long way toward “overcoming adversity.”

So, give me a concept (often one I’ve dreamt up) and I’ll start wondering what it could become: a book, a course, a business, a shit show, a campaign, a podcast, a column, a piece of artwork/design, a training program or something that probably doesn’t have a category yet. I think about names, audiences, messaging, structure, presentation and purpose almost instinctively.

My creative process is less about waiting for inspiration and more about continually generating possibilities.

To now be extremely transparent… what makes me particularly interesting, hmm, I guess, is the way I combine lived experience with intellectual curiosity – or, at least, I suppose you can say this is my point of difference. I’m not interested in simply telling people what I think; I want to understand why things work, why they don’t, and whether conventional thinking (or the status quo) deserves to be challenged.

I also have a strong instinct for communication and an appreciation for the power of a well-chosen word, but underneath the writing and creativity is something more fundamental: I want things to be useful. Whether I’m talking about adversity, disability, business, relationships, writing or personal development, haha or off on some wayward rant, I’m usually looking for a way to turn an observation into something another person can actually take away and use.

Perhaps the best way to understand “Mark” though is to recognise that I have never been particularly interested in allowing one chapter of my life to become the whole story. I have had to adapt, reinvent and reconsider what a meaningful life looks like more times than most people ever will, and somewhere along the way I developed a determination (um, stubbornness) not merely to endure my circumstances but to create things from them.

That’s what sits underneath so much of what I do.

I’m curious, opinionated, funny, occasionally a disaster, relentlessly creative and sometimes gloriously unconventional. But above all, I’m always most interested in what comes next (for me, for you – and how can we improve, be useful, bring meaning, forgive, recover) — and in fact, after everything, that may be the most revealing thing about me.

What’s next?