Oasis Live: The reunion & relief

I turned down $120,000, and this moment made it worth it…

reubenjwilliams

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So when I was 26, COVID made my dream job redundant, but then a Sports Marketing agency stepped in with an offer of a $120k (double what I was on at Cricket Australia).

I nearly took it. But I had a dream - to build a life of freedom, chasing events around the world on my terms.

So I said no… and regretted it almost immediately.

In the next 30 days my business, SportsGrad, made $350… $120k was looking pretty damn good right now!!

But I grinded it out and after 3 years the business was off the ground.

However now… I was grounded by a never ending court case, because a Cricket Australia executive thought it’d fun to sexually assault me.

I went down the justice route, which meant the case lingered as a dark cloud that would interrupt my peace of mind at any moment.

When a guilty verdict was finally handed down, I thought I was free of it.

Instead it got appealed, and hung over me for another 18 months.

It didn’t matter if I was at an Indian wedding, the Ashes or the Men’s 100m Final at the Olympics, it continued to hijack my mind.

After 6 years of hell - the re-trial verdict dropped.

And while it wasn’t the one I hoped for, it gave me something I hadn’t had in years: closure.

Enter: the Oasis reunion.

I lucked out on night 1 Manchester and night 1 Wembley, and I decided ‘fuck it, do both!’

Seeing Oasis in the UK was like going to a football final you’d already won.

The way they covered every surface in Manchester was on par with a World Cup, and Wembley will probably be the loudest pub choir I’ll ever join.

I’ve been lucky to do some wild things.

But this time, for the first time in six years, nothing pulled me out of the moment.

No dark cloud creeping in. Just 90,000 people jumping to ‘Cigarettes & Alcohol’.

So if you’ve ever had your dreams clouded by trauma, I get it.

But even if it takes you 6 years to clear the fog, the other side is worth it.

I can’t say the same when I was at Wembley a year earlier for Taylor Swift… but that’s a story for another time.