Emphasis on Success, not Adversity

You might have thought that this blog would have revelled in my adversity backstory. While The Successity Blog will touch on this from time to time, however, on one level all you need to know from my adversity perspective is that at one stage in my life I was a successful up-and-coming corporate-commercial lawyer in a leading London law firm and that my career was unexpectedly cut short by a debilitating case of late onset bipolar disorder. This caused chaos throughout my life and considerable stress on my family and friends. At one moment I was a leading legal light in my professional life and a ”life and soul of the party” type in my social activities; and the next I was a depressive recluse that couldn’t keep down a job, shunned his friends and couldn’t do anything much.

I was very ill indeed for a couple of years, but soon I recovered sufficiently to look around me and wonder what I was going to do with the rest of my life having (as I did) a diagnosis that sternly suggested that I should never return to a stressful life in the Law. It was at that point I took up screenwriting, although I will analyse in another blog how that came about. If there was one thing I had learned as a lawyer it was that perseverance and determination are key to success in whatever you do, so I persevered with my screenwriting over many years until now when I am on the cusp of success.

So, while The Successity Blog will occasionally discuss adversity and my experiences with it, it’s far more constructive and interesting in my opinion to talk about my observations on success, screenwriting, creativity, and the film world in general.

Future blogs will begin to discuss what we mean by “success”. In the meantime, the next blog will do something very close to my heart and which might happen once a week or so – review a film.