All About Me

Written on 1st September 2022

If you hadn’t already gathered from the title of the website, my name is Alexis Sugden, I’m 18 years old and this page tells you some of the things I think you should know about me.

I was born in Swindon, England to a French mother, Northern father and have lived in West Berkshire for my whole life, which I would say is a very lucky place in the world to grow up. I don’t come from a filthy rich family which I’m glad about, but by no means am I poor, and I consider this a perfect balance.

I’m currently in secondary school carrying out A-levels in Mathematics, Chemistry, Business Studies, Economics and Design Technology. Despite me not believing as strongly in the current mainstream education system I still find great interest in these subjects.

Alongside my “official education” I work as a waiter in a Pub and as an Administrator at a local Estate Agents. I enjoy educating myself and becoming aware of global issues like climate change and conflict, learning about different cultures and following changes within the economy and seeing the bigger picture. This ties into one of my primary traits of having an incredible amount of different interests, sometimes I wonder whether I have too many. And the fact that I have ADHD probably explains why I can’t focus on any of these interests for prolonged periods of time without diverting my attention elsewhere.

One of my other main interests is adventure and the outdoors. Having been a part of Scouting since the age of 6 and coming from a background of scouting and adventure enthusiasts, it naturally plays a huge part in my life, and I encourage anyone to participate if you get the chance.

Hobbies

Over the years I have had many different hobbies, but some of the most prominent in my life are Badminton, Video Games and Scootering. Although recently I have slightly diverged from these hobbies they are now undoubtedly a part of my history. Before the club I was part of closed down just before the COVID-19 pandemic, I played Badminton for 4-5 years taking part in a few county level tournaments, although not performing very well in most of them, despite that I still enjoyed my time as a Junior Badminton player.

Like many other young people in the world who are lucky enough to have access to electricity and the internet, video games are another of my hobbies. Playing various games over the years I now feel as though I’ve wasted a lot of my time on consoles, but I still can’t deny that I’ve had a lot of fun online. In 2017-18 I took up Scootering as a serious hobby, visiting one of my local skateparks almost everyday (Click the oval image to see some of this on my Instagram account) . During this time I learned lessons of how dedication and hard work can yield favourable results in a short space of time, which is a principle I now apply to my daily life.

You may decide to skip past the next bit, but a list of the other hobbies/ interests that I have dipped in and out of over my life include those below:

Cycling/ Mountain Biking 🚲
Climbing (Mostly trees as a kid) 🧗‍♂️
Football (Newcastle United fan) ⚽
Reading (Mostly non-fiction and science) 📖
Cooking 🍽
Walking and Running 🏃‍♂️
Music (Huge AC/DC fan) 🎸

Swimming (Preferably in natural sources like lakes and the sea) 🏊‍♀️
Kayaking 🛶
Travel (Particularly troubled areas of the world) 🌎

And more recently:
Working on my podcast 🎙
Investing in stocks, mutual funds and crypto. 📈📉
Learning about climate change. 🌎

My ambitions and drive

This is a slightly more difficult topic for me to talk about as I really haven’t decided on an exact career path or any exact goals I want to achieve. So this section will be a lot shorter than it probably should be considering I have many different ambitions which any normal person would tell me is way too ambitious or unrealistic.

I think this quote from Gandhi sums up what I’d like to achieve in my time. One of the main changes I know I’d like to see in this world is in terms of climate change, you’ll probably hear me talking about that quite a lot. Currently “Net Zero” is one of my biggest ambitions and hopefully I can contribute greatly to the cause with things such as my podcast and businesses I plan to create. Unsurprisingly one of my other main ambitions is to become financially successful i.e: I don’t have to rely on employment to support my lifestyle and I can buy whatever I want. I’m aiming for and putting great effort into being able to afford things which many people consider luxury and proving to people what I’m really capable of. Sounds like a very generic and common goal in life, but I really am pushing for those levels and have great belief in what I’m doing to be able to accomplish this goal. I’m very ambitious in many different things I participate in and enjoy the journey as much as, if not more than the final destination. I pride myself in becoming somewhat decent at any activity that I take part in, and deliberately go out of my way to improve on areas I fall behind in. I consider myself someone who has a deep willingness to learn, and especially learn from my mistakes. I’ve probably failed at more things than a lot of people, and I’m proud of this, as it means I can pick up on the areas of myself which need the most improvement. Overall I feel that most of my drive comes from wanting to be a better person than I was yesterday, and me not accepting anything less in life than my actual lifetime ambitions, because at the end of the day “Dreams don’t work unless you do”.

Other things you should know about me

Despite a lot of people saying I seem very confident, I can be very awkward in certain situations and often struggle to find a way to kickstart a conversation with someone, and I still haven’t figured out what causes it. There are other situations however where you would beg for me to shut up, I guess I have very distinct on/off button, with very little in-between. Because of this, I feel it’s hard for my to be labelled as either an introvert or an extrovert, personally I’d like to consider myself as more of an extrovert, but certainly not the self centred type, more of the type who is willing to share his ideas and opinions in a manner which invites question from external sources. Growing up as a child and even now, I’ve never been perfectly behaved and probably never will, a constant urge to move and speak my mind at any time often makes it difficult for me to stay out of some form of trouble, although I haven’t yet been in trouble with the law. Speaking my mind often comes in the form of sarcasm and it’s one of the things which often brings me humour, sometimes making myself laugh with my own remarks.

Hopefully you’re now more aware of who I consider myself to be, and without a doubt the more you explore my website the more you will get to grips with what I think about various different topics and get a deeper description of the things I get up to on a day-to-day basis.