Lifelong friendships

It's now virtually two full months since I relocated to Melbourne. I have found Melbourne to truly be the most exciting, vibrant, accepting, welcoming, happy, cultural, alive, warm and hospitable Australian city I have ever visited, let alone lived in.

It has been the very best decision in my life that I have ever made.

In every story about my life, be that personal or professional, I always talk about the word lifelong. That might be about lifelong friends or lifelong learning.

In my professional education career, I always make reference to lifelong learning.

In my personal life, I make reference to lifelong friends.

Up until this year, I always thought I didn't have any lifelong friends.

My perception of not having lifelong friends is what has driven so many of my decisions around my two sons Matt and Nick.

Everything I did and sacrificed for them was to ensure they had the most stable living and schooling arrangements that I could possibly enable and influence. This included giving virtually my entire share at Property Settlement in 2008 so they didn't have to change schools and change homes like what happened to me multiple times as I grew up.

From ages 5 to 32, I had attended two primary schools, two secondary schools, one university and lived in over 25 homes. By age 32, I also had either taught or been in an administrative role, in 7 separate schools and relocated cities or towns 9 times.

As a result of all this, I believed I never had the chance to develop lifelong friends because I simply moved around too much.

But over the past 8 months, in particular over the past 3 months, I have come to realise I always had some lifelong friends, I just never knew it.

I have also come to understand, as I have written previously in my Blog, I never let anyone get to know the real Anthony, and as such, I was the barrier to my perception of not having lifelong friends, not the other way round.

My old school friends in the 1980's from Kepnock State High School in Bundaberg, Queensland all continue stay in touch, and I even met up with many of them socially during my recent time living in the Bundaberg region.

In the past 2 months, I have been truly touched by my professional educational colleagues who have all rallied around me as I sought to obtain new employment here in Melbourne. Some of these professional colleagues have also put their name publicly with a professional recommendation on my LinkedIn profile. Many of my professional colleagues I have actually known since the early 1990's.

For the greater part of my life, I always thought I had no lifelong friends, when in fact, I always did, I just didn't know it.

Some people in my life said I changed when I came out and some still maintain that narrative.

Truth is, I never did change, I just took down the invisible cloak and let everyone get to know all of the real me and I couldn't be any happier.

I have always believed in myself, always maintained my integrity and always stood by my principles, no matter how unpopular that made me at times.

Much of this was actually modelled to me by my stepdad Bazza.

So the moral of my story here is simply....

Never ever give up on yourself!

My website BMWiFi.com.au is all about this idea of always believing in yourself, because that is when the magic begins.

The picture below is me with some of my professional colleagues from John Paul College in the 1990's at a reunion we had in April 2023.