Changes

This blog has been literally haunting me for a few days now. It’s kept me awake for two nights, and as much as I am trying to fight it, it’s time for it to be birthed, so to speak.

You know that I am on a roll with these song titles. This could be one of two songs with the title Changes. You might guess Bowie, but this is actually the Black Sabbath song which is in my head. Not a typical song for Sabbath, but one that holds a lot of meaning. One that is older than me!

Someone I knew from a previous life introduced me to this track, I was probably about 17. Even now, over 30 years later when I hear this, it makes me cry. Not a big fat wail, but just the tears that slowly fall down your cheeks. I am listening to it now as I am writing.

This person wasn’t really one that got away, he was never really there.

He was sort of hanging out with a friend when we first met, which must have been a few years earlier when I was about 15. Unlike anyone I’d met before, he was a bit older than us. The memories are sketchy now, but I seem to remember he was in and out of trouble, the kind of guy your parents would really dislike! He was someone who fascinated me.

A good few years later, unexpectedly we ran into each other again. We were probably both knee-deep in Newcastle Brown, and for some reason, we decided we were going to get married. Most likely the Brown Ale talking, but we were lost in the moment, and incredibly serious, as you are when you’re drunk.

We never did marry, we never saw each other again. He vanished as quickly as he reappeared. Every now Changes pops up on Spotify and I wonder what could have been.

But this story isn’t really what this blog is about, or at least not all of it.

Sometimes someone comes into your life and you have no idea what has hit you. One text message, Tweet, conversation or phone call changes the whole trajectory of your life. And there is absolutely nothing you can do about it.

Our lives are not planned, as much as we like to think they are, and we have these great ideas of where we’ll be, they are not in our control. Each microdecision we make can change everything. They are the things that we don’t and can’t plan for. Sometimes that smallest choice kicks off a massive change somewhere further down the line.

Some of the best things that have happened in my life have been as a result of a tiny decision that I really didn’t see the significance of at the time.

Take my move to Manchester, and my tech career. That all sprang from a decision to go to the supermarket with my Dad and Nan. Not something that I’d normally do, and something that was a microdecision made on the spur of the moment.

That decision ultimately enabled me to leave an abusive relationship (admittedly it got me into another one, but hey), and it got me an 18-year tech career that paved the way for where I am now.

However, where I am now is not exactly where I saw myself back in the heady days of Newcastle Brown in the Wapentake in Sheffield.

I never imagined living in suburbia, in a house that I rattle around in, with two cars and a combined income that makes me incredibly privileged. That’s not what I saw coming for me. I still don’t see it.

Both my parents came from council housing estates in Sheffield, another microdecision changed that. My dad had a serious motorbike accident, that afforded my parents the ‘luxury’ of being able to buy a house. That one decision of the driver that crashed into my Dad set off another chain of events that saw Mum and Dad meet, and me be in the world.

Maybe Ozzy has come into my mind to remind me that change does happen. He is allegedly singing about the breakdown of a relationship and the changes that come with it.

Maybe he’s reminding me of the decisions that I have made in the past, that created incredible change in my life. Who knows?

All I know is that changes are coming, perhaps I should have referenced Bowie after all? Only time will tell…

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes
Turn and face the strange
Ch-ch-changes
Don’t want to be a richer man
Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes
Turn and face the strange
Ch-ch-changes
There’s gonna have to be a different man
Time may change me
But I can’t trace time