My Life in WordsEverything interesting I do, I write about here.
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 I had the honour of being invited by the Stop Loan Sharks team to be part of a live interview to both promote my winning entry into their writing competition and raise awareness about loan sharks. Check it out at the below link, and I have to say everyone can be taken in by a loan shark, and considering it normally takes a person 2 to 3 years to seek help, and that is if they are ever going to seek help, the more people know about the tactics loan sharks use, and about how most loan sharks once outed never commit the crime again, the better. Because the more people know about loan sharks the less power loan sharks have, in the harder it will be for them to operate, also the more people know about loan sharks the more they may be able to help save a person from a loan shark.
That means even if you don't check out the interview below, which I highly recommend that you do because you know I am in it… Jokes aside, even if you don't check out the interview below I highly recommend that you check out their website and learn a little bit about loan sharks, because by doing so you genuinely could be helping to save not only yourself but someone you know, perhaps even a family member from being taken in by a loan shark. https://fb.watch/2Y8pmQKzJI/ Humbled to Have Been Announced As One of the Winners in Stop Loan Sharks Short Story Competition6/12/2020 I'm proud to announce today that the poem I wrote, The Loan Shark, is one of the seven winners in Stop Loan Sharks short story competition. As a winner it has been recorded and was read out during annual Stop Loan Sharks week which started on the 30th November.
To view the poem and check out the announcement see the below link: www.stoploansharks.co.uk/tyne-and-wear-writer-wins-national-short-story-competition/ I'm very happy and proud to have been selected as one of the winners and hope that the poem along with the winners from the other categories can help raise awareness for what is such an important cause, especially with what is going on at the present time. With all the financial distress that so many people are suffering a current, loan sharks will be in their element and so people who may fall into the hands of such unscrupulous people will need all the support they can get, support which Stop Loan Sharks provides. For more information on just who Stop Loan Sharks are and what they do, along with how you can help check out their website: www.stoploansharks.co.uk  I have had many acting experiences over the past ten years, but perhaps my favourite to date is a music video which was shot back in early 2012.
It was produced by Tall Man Short Man Films, and was an entry for a music video competition by leading band Mona run through Genero TV, my role was the lead male actor, and to say the least it was a bit of a whirlwind experience, Tall Man Short Man Films Jamie Korn messaged me out of the blue looking for a male lead, stating that the shoot was in two days.  I presently have no use of my left hand, and have only extremely limited use of my right hand. To cut a long story short on how this happened, in 2008 I suffered a partial tear in the scapholunate ligament of my right wrist.
I was supposed to have a full repair job done on the ligament, however, at the last minute it was decided to first remove some ganglion cysts which had formed as a result of the tear. The reason being the ligament repair surgery did not have a good success rate.  Over the years I have acted in a number of things, from short films, to theatre productions, to music videos to TV series and even to feature films.
That sounds much better than it is of course, the short films were just local amateur projects, most of my own making, the theatre productions were local and small scale, the music videos were also local and small-scale, the TV series was extra work as was the feature film.  I’m a big fan of bodybuilding, I suspect it was Arnold Schwarzenegger films that got me into it, perhaps Jean-Claude Van Damme as well and Sylvester Stallone. Needless to say I’m a big fan of 80s and 90s action films. But also I’m a big wrestling fan, and grew up watching Shawn Michaels, Stone Cold Steve Austin, The Rock, The Undertaker and all the others from the attitude era battling it out with their monster physiques.
But it was not just seeing these Goliaths on film and TV battling it out that got me into the gym, it was also my experiences at school. I was a tall and superslim teen, and was bullied frequently as a result. Therefore seeing these Goliaths on TV gave me the idea that if I looked like that no one would ever be able to bully me again.  If all humans died tomorrow, would the world stop spinning, the sun stop shining, the stars stop lighting the night? No, in the grand scheme of nature and the universe, not even an eyelid would be battered. Life only matters because we choose to make it matter. Remember that, and remember that you, and you alone get to choose what is important in life.
And you don't make this choice through your words or thoughts, you make it through your actions. For me I believe family is the most important thing, which is why I spend more time with family than anyone else, and I love writing, which is why I spend more time writing than anything else.  I always find when you say the words male model, people for some reason think a man getting naked and sitting in the middle of a room being painted by women in an art class. Either that or they think of Zoolander – if you haven’t seen the film, I can’t recommend it enough, Ben Stiller at his very best.
That is not the type modelling I’ve done though I did most often seem to have my top off.  This blog was my first foray into the writing world, and I set it up by chance a 2008 while studying a degree in finance and investment management. I needed some inspiration to keep me researching the stock market, and this became that inspiration. I would post all my research and analysis on the companies listed on the stock markets.
The most successful and followed part of my blog was 'Gray's Stocks to Watch', where I posted the names of the stocks and shares that were of most interest to me, when the prices were of most interest to me, along with blog posts in which I explained my reasoning.  I started my journey as a writer back in 2008. I was studying Finance & Investment Management at Northumbria University, and as part of that I set up an investment blog where I would write up company reports and offer my thoughts and opinions on the investment world.
The blog ended up gaining quite a big following, with thousands of views per article. Because of this, I was invited to become a contributor on Stockopedia -- a renowned investment website – which further increased my readership numbers. |
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