2013 is the year I learnt that conformity and convention are over-rated. That you need to act with agency and activism. From the early 2000s until late 2012 I laboured under and scaled over the message that a degree equals a job, only to find recruiters perfectly indifferent to my achievements and my very person. 2013 is the year I came awake to the cult of university and to Britain and Ireland's hereditocracy. This experience of youth unemployment left indellible scratches on my brain. I felt "the endless misery", as George Orwell put it.
Against George Orwell's stamping boot, I made a resolution: never again would I write a CV, cover letter, application or do a verbal reasoning or psychometric test. If the world didn't want me I would come and get it. I learnt that if you want to achieve greatest you have to stop asking for permission. In 2013 my life became, not a matter of who would let me, but who was going to stop me. I also learnt that it wasn't me who had the problem, it was them. I learnt to say as Robert Downey Jr said:
"Listen, smile, agree. Then do whatever the fuck you were gonna do anyway."
