Crashing Into Potential. Scott B Harris
come from this has been incredible. Goals have been the backbone of my successful recovery and I owe a lot to the people who brought them into my life. Goals have essentially been the roadmap to my recovery; they have given me a path to follow for the last nine years.
Part One of this book is about what happened to me from the day of the accident on. You will journey with me through all of the turmoil that my life has thrown at me. You will see what I went through and the struggles I’ve faced, only to come out the other side with a greater appreciation for life and the people around me.
Part Two will show you, through my own experience, what you can do when you believe in yourself. If you come to the end of this book and find yourself looking at the brighter side of a once darkened existence, I would love to connect with you. You will find my details at the front of the book.
I don’t want this book to be just a story; I want it to be a book of inspiration. I want you to go out and achieve great things in your own life because I believe that we are all capable of doing this. Remember, as someone wise once said, ‘Falling down is an accident, staying down is a choice.’
The Accident
Shit happens.
- HARRIS FAMILY
I had a great childhood. Some would say I was an active kid; I spent a lot of time outside running around. Any sport I played, I loved, until I wasn’t the best and then I would quit.
At one point I was kayaking, which I really enjoyed because this was something I was good at. My brother, Brett, and I would be up at 6 am in the middle of winter, out on the river paddling. We both loved it.
When I went to the Australian Championships, I won one gold, two silver and a bronze medal. After that I took six months off due to injury and bad health. When I came back to the sport I was no longer winning. This was the late 1990s and by the naughties, I had given up. I had quit because I wasn’t the best anymore. Now some of the guys who paddled with me then have competed in the Olympics.
It’s easy to look back on your life and think, What if? This question has crossed my mind so many times in the last decade and I have spent hours thinking about it. The conclusion I always come to is that I can’t do anything about it, so just move on. I can’t change the past, so I must move on.
I got my first job when I was fifteen, flipping burgers and making coffee at the local McDonald’s. In my opinion, this was the best job around because not only did I get to work with 120 other kids my age, I also made some lifelong friends. OK, granted, the work was hot and greasy and I hated getting up at 4.30 am when I had to set up in the morning. But it taught me what real work was and that in itself looks unbelievable on a résumé.
After five years, it was time to move on. But when I finished my tertiary education, I was jobless and I had no direction. I had done an Advanced Diploma in Digital Graphics at JMC Academy in Melbourne. My big dream was to work at the marvellous Pixar Studios in California. I could imagine being a part of the next big Toy Storyflick. That was until I discovered this was a dream shared by literally thousands and thousands of other people. With a ‘fixed’ mindset, I believed that the competition was too great, so gave up. I lost interest.
Being lost, I was starting to wonder where my life was going to go from here.
I found a job working at a cafe serving ice cream at Melbourne’s Federation Square, but when winter came around I had no real income because winter in Melbourne is cold, miserable and no one is on the search for ice cream.
After six months I was jobless again until my brother came to the rescue. He is an electrician and his boss was on holidays. They were in need of hands and any hands would do, so I put one up and helped out.
I fell in love with it. I worked for three weeks and earned more money than I had ever seen in one paycheck. So when the boss returned, I asked him if I could do an apprenticeship.
I started working full-time all over Melbourne: from high-rises to industrial estates to private homes. We worked in many of the manholes on the side of the road, connecting fibre networks across the city of Melbourne, sometimes Sydney and even Perth. We did a lot of work in new and old buildings, including old schools from the 1860s. You can imagine how fascinated a young man like myself was climbing through roofs and under buildings that were over 150 years old.
My job was so diverse that I could be working in an old building on Monday, building a new factory on Tuesday, and then every Wednesday I’d head off to trade school with an awesome group of boys. We would put our feet up and have some fun. Our classroom was jam packed with young men all full of testosterone having a day off work together; it wasn’t all that productive but I loved it.
Thursday we’d be under the city working and Friday we’d knock off early. Knocking off required going back to the factory in Eltham and having a beer to recap the week. My life consisted of no responsibility, no worries and all the freedom in the world. At the time, I liked the idea of working for ‘the man’ and not taking life too seriously. Oh, did I mention the RDOs? Yes, every second Monday we got a rostered day off, just because it was fair; that is what the trade union argued, anyway.
This was in 2006 and by 2008 I was loving what I did every day of the week. I loved my work because I made some great mates, I made some great money and I had the weekend to do what I wanted. At that stage, I started to think a bit about what would happen after I finished my apprenticeship, which was the first grown-up thought of my life. I considered travelling overseas and working abroad for a year, as my sister had done years before.
It was coming up to the Spring Racing Carnival – Melbourne’s premier horseracing event – which I had attended for the past two years. That year I went along with a great group of people. We had been mates for years and I had the best time I had ever had at the carnival. I remember that day so clearly.
I got up super early, just as I had on the first day of the carnival in the past. I woke up before my alarm and felt great from the early night I’d had to prepare myself. If the day turned out to be anything like the previous years, it was going to be a big event. I jumped out of the shower as quick as I had jumped in. Grabbing my race attire, I got in the car ready to go, all in the space of about ten minutes. I had a tendency to get overexcited about things I knew would be fun; that’s just who I was.
I was the first to arrive at my brother’s house and he had a beer waiting for me. Brett was already dressed in his suit and was just as excited as I was. I changed into my costume, a perfectly tailored grey suit from Thailand. I put on my new Prada sunglasses and a few sprays of cologne, looked in the mirror and quietly thought, it’s going to be a good day; you’re looking OK today, mate. I went out to the kitchen and said to everyone, ‘Let the games begin.’
While I’d been self-obsessing in the mirror, Ange and Celeste had arrived to join the party. Shortly after, Dave, Chris, Trav, Oki and Kate walked in and really got the ball rolling. It was about 7.30 am at this stage, which was rather early to be starting the antics, but to get a good spot on the grass, smack-bang in the middle of the riffraff, you had to be early. On top of that we still had to find a cab and make our way there. Really, the reason we started so early was because we all knew what was in store for us that day. And this was the first time in three years I was going there as a single man, with no one looking over my shoulder and no one to answer to. I was prepared to get loose.
Beep, beep, ‘Everyone, the cabs are here,’ was the call to head off to Flemington Racecourse. We got there just after the gates opened and made our way to the 300-metre mark at the end of General Admission on the home straight. The grass looked so fresh and the people looked so clean, but you knew that in just six hours time the bomb would go off and everyone would leave the venue looking like there’d been a meltdown. It did every other year – what would have changed? Nothing. To our delighted surprise, solid tables had been installed on the grass that year and we were lucky enough to snag one and enough chairs. It was still a few hours until the first race, but we didn’t really care because we were there in our position, ready to take on the day.
Once