I wanted to try to work at big sporting events partly so that I could understand the world my dad spent so much time in, and loved.
It wasn’t necessarily about wanting to follow in his footsteps. It was more about wanting a deeper understanding of who he was. My dad: a man I identified with and admired and yet knew little about.
I travelled to Nanjing for my first event as a sub-editor, in 2014, and got a bit emotional on the first night in my hotel room. “This isn’t me,” I remember thinking. “It’s him. I should be at home with Sholée and the girls.”
But the people I worked with on that trip were amazing, so supportive and friendly.
Now, having worked at a few such events, it turns out that I love them too.
But impostor syndrome is real. I couldn’t sneeze because of it.
At most of the events I’ve worked, there’s been a part of my brain that wanted me to keep a low profile, to stay quiet and hidden, to not be noticed in case I got found out as a ‘fraud’ who didn’t deserve to be there as I’d only got in through my late dad’s work and legacy.
I’d go to sneeze but would somehow manage to stifle it. I would stay quiet but surely people who saw me at that moment must’ve thought I was an idiot with very unnatural behaviours.
Then eventually I came to realise what was going on and decided to recognise the fact that, possibly, I kept getting invited back to work at big sporting events because I had something useful to offer, maybe I actually contributed valuable work.
Maybe I was there on merit, not just because of my surname.
I decided to tell myself, every time I wanted to sneeze in the office surrounded by people I respect hugely, that I too was “here on merit”.
Muted or stifled sneezes are now a thing of the past.
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