The First Post
from the Longevity Coach
So I joined Substack… I’ve been meaning to do it for a while and the time has come!
I’m pretty good at setting up social media profiles, and even pretty good at playing the social media game.
I like writing but I’ve run a bit dry after various forays into different topics, wearing different hats.
Hopefully, this time is different. I’ve been thinking and exploring for a while now. I’ve been considering what to do to get out of a rut.
At this present moment, I’m an English teacher. Teaching English as a Foreign Language, online, to Chinese children and Russian adults. Not in the same lessons though.
I’m good at it. I like it. I’m pretty popular too. My schedule is full. My students seem to like me, they tend to stick around and most even get better at English too!
But I’m bored. I guess that’s the bottom line. It’s been fun. But now I’m bored.
The rut!
And to be honest, while the rest of the world has gotten more expensive in the last few years my hourly rate has stayed more or less the same. So now I’m feeling broke too.
I started teaching in 2005. I’ve been teaching, this time around, for about 7 years. A pretty good run!
Before this, I was a Shiatsu therapist and corporate onsite therapist in London for about 10 years. I started studying in my early 20s and started to work in the industry sometime before I turned 30.
I had this strong desire to help people. So I did. I must have helped several thousand people throughout my therapy career. After a while it didn’t feel deep enough. I could only help so many people in a week before my hands and body got tired. I tried to multiply myself by taking on other therapists but then I wasn’t doing the work I loved anymore. And we need more than just bodywork, as powerful as it may be.
I had a good run. But I was getting tired, not so young anymore and looking forward to a future of endless treatments, running around London, didn’t fill me with joy. The passion I felt for Shiatsu and bodywork was running low…
So I left. My wife was burned out from her job in Education. She was always cold and ill in London. So we went to live the good life in Thailand. I loved it, she hated it. Too many creepy crawlies, mosquitoes with dengue fever and food that upset her stomach.
So we left again. This time to Crete in Greece. Where it’s always warm and sunny right? Wrong! It’s still Europe. Just southern Europe, so it’s warmer for longer. We found a place on the side of a mountain in a small town with friendly people.
I remembered that I used to teach English, so I started again… And you know where that part of the story ends, in the teaching rut…
So I spent some time thinking about what I really wanted to do with the next ‘half’ of my life. What were my passions, why I had started Shiatsu, and what I wanted in my future…
I recalled an old project website I had started in 2013, in my mid-30s, that I loved but hadn’t continued, partly due to my age. It was the LifeExtensionProject . com (no longer in existence and not backed up on the Wayback Machine either). You might have guessed, correctly, that it was about Life Extension and Longevity. Something I’ve long been interested in but felt a bit premature as a 36-year-old. I was so young then that I didn’t even take myself seriously.
But now I’m 46 and my wife is 10 years older than me… Now it’s a little more feasible. Now it’s a little more urgent.
Now is my moment to jump into learning about the field of Longevity seriously!
As I write this I have nearly completed my initial training to be a health and wellbeing coach. I have a number of trainings in Longevity coaching lined up. I’m excited to learn, to take on new challenges, to develop a new career, albeit connected to my teaching and therapy careers.
I’m excited that I can continue to help people, but on a different level, in a different way than how I helped people before. With more personal experience. With a long-term view of the future.
My plan with this substack is to share insights and learnings as I train to be a Longevity Coach. I hope I never finish learning, a lot is going on out there!
This is more about exploring the territory than having all of the answers. I have more questions than anything at this stage.
The biggest question is probably “Is it even possible?”.
Followed by “What would it even look like?”
I’ll be exploring these questions in future posts here, so I hope you’ll subscribe.
I’m not offering a paid subscription yet because I’m not ready to claim any authority on the subject of Life Extension or Longevity… But give it some time and I’ll have all sorts of goodies for you!
Note: I added a paid subscription option because apparently, Substack will promote my account more this way. But don’t subscribe because there’s nothing to see yet… Unless you just really want to support me?
Until then, I hope you’ll join me on this journey as we all progress through life while trying to keep the outside looking and feeling like we inevitably feel on the inside.
To your long and radiant life!
Simon.
This ends the first post.