SCABs

My Final SCAB – By @jacobdefig

By  Jacob De Figueiredo

 

 

My final scab 

 

Here it is ladies and gentlemen, my final ever scab. It’s been one hell of a ride but we’ve made it here together and that’s all that matters. Two SCA years has been one hell of a rollercoaster for me, I’m rapidly approaching the time I broke up with the partner 2 years ago and all those familiar emotions are flooding their way back to me. Ever so slowly creeping in with 1 and a half weeks to go. I feel as though I’m in a much better place than I was back then though, I remember feeling nothing but fear and dread in the old days and now I feel content with my life and fully excited to see what the future holds for me. 

I’ve had a pretty rough time over these last few years and I’ve cultivated enough mass to finally have morphed into some kind of monster man, who barrels down the streets of Brixton whilst striking fear into the hearts and minds of people everywhere. Skinny Jacob didn’t hold such power. 

Mentally I feel as if I’ve changed too. I no longer feel like a lost child wandering the world with no direction or purpose. If we rewind 5 years to this very day I would have been unpacked boxes of fresh fish and neatly arranging them on the shelves of Waitrose, feeling completely hopeless. It’s actually quite amazing the direction my life has taken over the last few years. I’ve been given countless amazing opportunities without asking anything in return and I’m eternally grateful for anyone who’s helped me get to the place I’m at now. 

The course my life has taken was completely and utterly unplanned. I managed to snag a year in an agency without having a bloody clue about what was going on, did 2 years at the craziest advertising school / any school that could possibly exist and a year helping people with drug-induced psychosis for the NHS. 

Each one of those experiences has been more emotionally intense than the last. 

Grey London was the one where I feel like I developed the most. I remember sitting in my Waitrose uniform in my old bedroom erratically scrolling through pages and pages of apprenticeship websites not really sure what I was looking for and driven by only pure fear and constant nagging from both my parents, which is to be expected. I never used to want to apply because I’d think to myself, ‘what use would any employer have for a 19-year-old boy whose only skills at the time were smoking fags and playing worrying about of video games.’ 

 My dad always said to me that I was born to do something amazing, but I never really believed him. He would say that I’ve got a chance of getting a job by of throwing a paper airplane out of my bedroom window with my phone number on it than just sitting around and doing nothing, which I found oddly inspiring. So that’s what I did. And obviously, nothing happened. 

But after that, I did my final scroll, placed my finger on the screen and it landed on an apprenticeship for the creative agency Grey London. I had to fill in some weird form which was basically a mini paragraph about my predictions from the future and that was it. Next thing I know I was invited down for what was the most intense experience of my life. 

I turned up to Grey without a clue. I didn’t have my passport or any kind of documentation, everyone else around me was wearing suits whilst I thought it would be cool to wear a t-shirt and one of those dirty Adidas shell suits that used to be all the rage. 

There were about 400 people having to apply for the job, all of us were trembling with fear in their lobby. The day was hosted like an episode of the X factor. Where half to the room would stay and go on to the next round and the other half would have to go home and that was dictated by a maths and English test, so I knew I was basically going home at that point. 

Somehow I managed to scrape through that one. The next round was pitching a fairly liquid easter collaboration idea to the room, which I managed to do ok at. I think my idea was changing the colour of the bottle and putting little easter icons inside it so children would be more likely to point it out in a shop when shopping with their kids. Maybe that should go in my book. Pretty clever. 

Then I went home and I waited. Fairly sure I hadn’t managed to beat all the other applicants. I carried on with my life, stacking fish in the fresh department without giving it a second thought. 

On a sunny afternoon in May, I was sitting on a park bench on my lunch break, chaining cigarettes and waiting for the world to pass me by and my phone rang. They’d told me I’d got the job and I broke down into tears. I didn’t really know what I’d got myself into, but I knew in my heart of hearts that my life was about to change forever. I got up off my bench, bought a singular beer and laid down on the tarmac for hours and hours on end, I felt free. 

It started to rain but I just sat, feeling alive and free and a bit pissed. 

My life changed forever that day, for better or for worse. It changed. I feel nothing but excitement for the future and all it took was that first leap of faith into the unknown. 

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