When I'm done skating, I guarantee you that I will not look back and remember standing on the podium. I'm going to remember these days - being with the team. Training alone, in my basement. Training when everybody else is sleeping. Doing things that nobody else is doing. Digging down. Seeing what kind of character I truly have. I love that stuff.
I remember my first day at grammar school, being the only person who was me. Everybody else was like everybody else, and there I was, tanned, in a freezing cold playground in the middle of Middlesbrough, wondering what on earth I was doing there.
Even when I was training alone, just me and one of United's fitness coaches, I loved going onto the field, doing sprints, being at the training ground.
The things to do are: the things that need doing: that you see need to be done, and that no one else seems to see need to be done. Then you will conceive your own way of doing that which needs to be done - that no one else has told you to do or how to do it. This will bring out the real you that often gets buried inside a character that has acquired a superficial array of behaviors induced or imposed by others on the individual.
I train harder than anyone else in the world. Last year I was supposed to take a month off and I took three days off because I was afraid somebody out there was training harder. That's the feeling I go through every day - Am I not doing what somebody else is doing? Is someone out there training harder than I am? I can't live with myself if someone is.
Awareness is the key. Do we see the stories that we're telling ourselves and question their validity? When we are distracted by strong emotion, do we remember that it is our path? Can we feel the emotion and breathe it into our hearts for ourselves and everyone else? If we can remember to experiment like this even occasionally, we are training as a warrior. And when we can't practice when distracted but KNOW we can't, we are still training well. Never underestimate the power of compassionately recognizing what's going on.
The world isn't perfect, and some days it wears you down. You can either accept that, and face it, and be a help to others instead of a hindrance. Or you can decide the rules are too tough and they shouldn't apply to you, and you can ignore them and make things harder for everybody else. Sometimes life is about being sad and doing things anyway. Sometimes it's about being hurt and doing things anyway. The point isn't perfection. The point is doing it anyway.
I've made some films for the military that are teaching things like cultural awareness and leadership issues, that sort of stuff. And try to, in essence, look at what training they're doing and say, 'This is how you can improve the training from a humanistic point of view.'
I hope that people will one day look back at my skating and what I brought to the table. 'Remember when Patrick skated like this? Or remember when skating was like this?' That would be a cool legacy to leave behind.
I have to keep doing me. I have to not look at what everybody else is doing, or what everybody else thinks should be happening right now.
I'm going to remember this, I told myself sternly. I'm going to remember how awful they made me feel today. So when I'm scared and alone and whatever else is going to happen to me starts to happen, I'm going to remember that nothing about be as bad as being stuck here.Nothing.
But you're almost eighteen. You're old enough. Everyone else is doing it. And next year someone is going to say to someone else 'but you're only sixteen, everyone else is doing it' Or one day someone will tell your daughter that she's only thirteen and everyone else is doing it. I don't want to do it because everyone else is doing it.
If you look at the rest of my stuff, I always play characters that kind of don't look like me, 'cause I love transforming into someone else. I love being able to act, work and act, and then doing it under the radar.
At 10, I could walk down the street and see over everybody's head. I don't remember being little or having to look up at people. I think I was born 5 feet 10. It's not that I felt especially tall. I was wondering when everybody else was going to catch up.
Training, and every morning I have to take my dogs out into the forest. That's all I'm doing. I'm staying out of everything else. All other things that can take out my concentration and my energy from the training.
There's no media training. In cooking school, there's not even manager training. You learn the fundamentals of cooking. Everything else is learning by doing.
It's the little things you remember. My mam, Sue, would take me to training in a taxi when I was a kid if Dad, who is a builder, had to work on a Saturday morning. You look back at the stuff like that and realise the sacrifices were all worth it.