Lights Out - F1 Life

⭑Chapter 0 - Background Info⭑

My life is sort of all over the place and it has been since I was little. Since I was a little girl all I can remember is having the biggest of dreams when you're 10 everyone has big dreams they are more realistic than being princesses and superheroes. People want to be surgeons, astronauts, actors, and pop stars, but I was always the kid with the biggest dreams, the one who the teacher would say could be the prime minister if I wanted to. I truly believed that I could do absolutely anything that I put my mind to, though I can't remember what I wanted to be when I was 10 knowing myself it was something crazy that my parents went 'Oh my goodness are we going to have ring this child in' but that was me. 

As myself and my friends grew up people started to change their hopes and aspirations to going to law school, being dentists, and teachers. My goals also changed just maybe in the opposite direction, I became obsessed with Formula 1 at 14, so much so that I was waking up each race weekend during the European leg of the season at 1 am to watch the race and would cry if Ferrari made huge mistakes. Though I love all teams and all drivers I was (and still am) a hardcore Ferrari fan no matter how much it hurt my soul from the terrible pit stops to the disastrous strategies that I even started to support Red Bull as my second team so I wouldn't be crushed each race weekend. I was talking my parent's ears off almost every day talking about all the new gossip, driver changes, and just mainly F1-twitter which is god-awfully crazy. All of this obsession was helped along by my class teacher who made an F1 club at my school where we debriefed races and where I was bullied for being a Ferrari fan. This obsession became my new dream, sport was already a huge part of my life with track and field and netball being my main sports, and in school, I was great at science and PE so it made sense that my new dream was to be a driver physio and performance coach. I planned out my whole life at 15 with me going away to university in England to go back to where I was born and getting my work experience at Formula Medicine in Italy before achieving my dream.

Going to university in England at the University of Birmingham was amazing. Being born in England and living there until I was five gave me some memories, very vague memories, but memories all the same. I wanted to go back not only because it was going to be the best in terms of achieving my goals but also to go back to the place I lived the first five years of my life. Living in Europe also allowed me to have amazing experiences at festivals, concerts, sporting events, and parties, I made so many friends and lived enough for a whole lifetime but as soon as I got home, and lay down in my bed just alone with my thoughts. All I could then think about was that my life wasn't complete just yet because I hadn't yet worked my dream job in Formula 1. Even when I went to Silverstone for the British Grand Prix for four years in a row both as a fan and as a volunteer my life was still not yet complete, I didn't feel satisfied as I felt I hadn't yet achieved my life's purpose. That's what I thought this job would be, my life's purpose or a materialistic version of it, but again as I have matured my life has progressed and I know life is more than that but it doesn't change the eagerness to get this job and the life that I have dreams of for the last almost eight years.

I'm 21 now and have completed four years at the University of Birmingham still making sure to return home to Hamilton to see my family and spend time back at home. I now have a master's degree in sports science and a bachelor's degree in physiotherapy and have faced my fair share of sexism as such. Telling people what I want to do and that I am interested in Formula 1 has led for the last four years especially to "what's DRS", or "name every WDC" or just the plain old simple "no way you will ever work in Formula 1". Though I feel that sometimes these comments should have made me turn away from my dreams or at least feel less motivated towards it it did the opposite, with every snark, and sexist comment the fire within me to make it to Formula 1 became hotter and brighter. I just wanted to live my dream and the added bonus that those people would one day see me at races living my dreams but make it all the more sweeter.

Things got better and people were more welcoming when I moved to start working at the Formula Medicine training facility in Italy after finishing University. I had already been doing apprenticeships with the FM team while in my last year at school so I already knew people making the transition smoother. But people shared the same goals and knew the ways to help me get to where I wanted to go, and just understood me, I had finally found my people and it was amazing but that still wasn't the end of it for me. The road to work in Formula 1 is a long one taking five-ten years of work experience normally, but I still always had hopes that it wouldn't take that long so I tried to utilise all my time and my resources. When I was younger maybe 16 in year 12 at school my class teacher the one in charge of the F1 club got me to message Anglea Cullen on Instagram to ask how she went from New Zealand to being Lewis Hamilton's physio. From there, we have sort of kept in contact with me occasionally sending a congrats message after a good race or her asking me how things are going but I never expected that once small message that I had to be persuaded to write by my teacher because I was an awkward and surprisingly shy 16 year old would be the piece of resistance five years later in securing my future, the future I had always wanted.

AUTHORS NOTE

So far this looks good but I am just trying to get down a foundation to work off of and I am also finding that this is very time-consuming but still I will try to update as often as I can but so far I am really enjoying this and have so much respect for the Authors who are writing 12,000 word chapters.

-xoxo Me