MARK MILJONS-ROSTOKS
This is my blog and website encompassing all things me. I have many interests, many ambitions and one hell of a back story.
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.
Another thing I should probably mention, I’d just like to be able to talk to anybody about anything, at any time, with depth and understanding.
This dot com will be the platform for such rants.
WHAT IS NORMAL?
But with that said, and ambitions aside, really, I’m just a normal dude, well, apart from the fact that I can’t move. You see, just like most other Aussie yobbo blokes I make countless mistakes, I’m an absolute clown at times, and I looove boobs. Nope my disability hasn’t changed who I am; in fact, it’s just accentuated it.
I am and always have been an inspiring, determined dreamer.
Only these days there is that one clear contrast between who I was when I was young and who I am now; it’s this lack of movement thing. Total pain in the ass, the ultimate “change your plans,” it’s called quadriplegia. I mean, just to get out of bed in the morning, this often takes two hours, and then if I want to leave the house, that often takes several days of planning. But, it’s okay. I still achieve things all the time.
I guess my hands haven’t worked to play Nintendo, nor have I been well enough to go up the pub and get sloshed with my mates, so I’ve kinda been forced into a life of lesser superficial or frivolous distractions. In fact, it has been surprisingly nice.
Or, in other words my illness forced my focus towards one of meaning and feasibility.
As in when you have no choice, or overcoming the odds is your only choice to live any sort of feasible life, you kind of think about things a little differently.
LIFE BEYOND THE EGO
Now, also, I can’t say this has all been easy. I do still struggle. I can at times even see myself as a massive failure, the self-hatred used to smash me too, but hey, I’m still here alive and kicking. I’m still havin’ a crack. Chasing dreams. Doing my thing, not fussing about more failure; it’s as if simply trying new stuff, in and of itself has become the prize. Actually, furthermore, because of this station in life, I love how interesting/diverse/multi-dimensional my life has become. One thing you definitely can’t call me is boring. And as a result, I suppose, it is true, I do have a lot to pass on from lived experience.
CURIOUSITY
Yet, there is also a seriousness behind the creativity, the ambition, the chasing of dreams. 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?
And, 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.
PHILOSOPHY
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?
Mark My Words 