This is part three of my autobiography so far. Part one is here. Two is here.
So, just before I went to secondary school (age 12+) for the first time, we went to a covie camp. This was important for one main reason. During one of the sermons, we were shown a film, and whilst watching, I had an moment of absolute clarity, and total conviction. Christianity is true, there is a God, and he does love me. You know, typing that will never not be strange.
I broke down crying. I remember that moment as if it were an hour ago. I became a Christian. So, in a weird sort of way, my parent’s divorce kinda led me to converting to Christianity.
About year two or three of secondary school, I started going to visit the school counsellor. I remember nothing of those visits, only that they were helpful. During that time, I shunned friends, and mainly stayed in the school libary during my free time, or read books. I used books as an escape, leaving this world for different ones, preferring anything strange or different. I stripped through crime, fantasy and science fiction books rapidly. I also volunteered to help in the school library, putting books away, keeping it tidy and neat.
At some point, the school counsellor left, and a new one arrived. I didn’t gel with the new counsellor at all, and so didn’t go back. That would be my last counselling session for quite some time. Time passed.
At some point during this time, I felt snubbed by the librarian, a silly thing, I felt I’d been passed over for some additional responsibility. Additionally, I had a very brief ‘girlfriend’ and a relationship that I wouldn’t really engage at all with. That also led to an embarassing suituation a little while later, which I won’t repeat, which helped solidify my intent to remain a bachelor for some time, and would be the only time I briefly had a girlfriend, or any sort of significant other, to date.
Watching the solar eclipse at a covie camp
I switched from volunteering at the school libary, to helping out in the school IT suite, spending any spare time playing with the computers. I was the source of at least two spates of communication tools getting around the IT department’s lockouts to prevent them, since I just continually played with the sandbox I was given. For those geeks, at this point we were running windows XP. I however didn’t keep my mouth shut about the ways to talk to other pcs, and they spread like wildfire around the school, till they were locked down.
That was the first point I really got interested in computers.
During all this time, we had an… interesting contact schedule. Dad got us 2 and a half weekends out of every 4, and a weekday evening. We were with mum the rest of the time. Dad was at this point working for Kleeneze, delivering catelogs and taking orders. Since mum and dad didn’t really get on, or talk that much at all, we had basically different responsibilities and rules at each place. To an extent, we just got used to it. Mum and dad took turns to have us christmas, with the other parent having us over new year.
New year 2000, the milienium, I was at a relatively boring party at my church. I never did really get the whole new year thing, and to this day I still don’t.
Eventually, I did A-levels. I am the proud bearer of 2 A levels in vocational Information Comunication Technology, or in other words, how to use Microsoft Word. I only got a C in that, mainly because I was bored out of my mind, and the spec was just a bit mad. We did get taught some useful snippets though, I learnt basic binary and database normalisation. That was also the first time I created a website.
Next up, my first job.. To Be Continued…
