About

Timeline

• 1992: born in Chelmsford, UK.
• 1998: started playing rugby union. First computer access — Dad's Windows 95.
• 1999: first games consoles — N64, PS1.
• 2010: university at Loughborough, studying engineering physics, with a minor in drinking and sports. Reinvented myself.
• Jun 2013: graduated with a 2:1, moved back to Danbury, UK, first contract work in Braintree at a hardware resale company. Applied for the military.
• May 2014: joined the Royal Navy as a nuclear submarine engineer. Moved to Dartmouth for basic training, then Portsmouth for phase 2.
• 2016: deployed from Helensburgh, Scotland, on a DASO to the USA, completed NRC (PGDip in Nuclear Reactor Tech).
• Mar 2017: left the Navy (misaligned), got qualified as a PT and sports massage therapist.
• Jun 2017: started a health & wellness business, got headhunted into a BDM role by an old rugby coach of mine.
• Summer 2018: went on a 2 week holiday to Thailand. Had an existential/quarter-life crisis: "Is this what life is supposed to be?"
• Sept 2018: moved to Koh Lanta, Thailand, qualified as a dive master and guided for a season.
• 2019: moved to Phuket, took up an internship at Tiger Muay Thai coaching Crossfit. Wrote a novel. Got to 10 strict ring muscle ups and blew out my elbow.
• Autumn 2019: went to India for a month for yoga teacher training.
• Jan 2020: moved to Paddington in Sydney, rebuilt my PT business from the ground up.
• Mar 2020: COVID lockdown #1 collapsed my client base, rebuilt it outside in parks.
• Jun 2020: transitioned the clients back into the gym.
• 2021: moved to Redfern, Sydney, bought a scooter, built business to a comfortable and stable level.
• 2022: started online coaching, running corporate wellness programs.
• 2023: began learning software engineering. Hated myself for not starting in my teens, forged on anyway. Went to Burning Man on 6 days notice. No regrets.
• 2024: started AUKUS Consulting, began building AIPT, started looking for FT employed work in engineering again.
• Feb 2025: wrapped up my PT business, moved to Adelaide to take a project management role working on the naval shipyard.
• May 2025: got made redundant, trapped in a lease in a city I didn't want to be in and my world collapsed.
• Aug 2025: moved back to Sydney, started freelance tech consulting, building Concordance, AIPT. Short-term sublets, 1-2 weeks at a time, floating around.
• Sept 2025: got my first consulting contract into a friend's videography business.
• 2026: …

Why I write

Books were my first friends, and synthesis was how I read them. I pulled threads across whatever I happened to be reading and watched what they made together. The habit predated the experience to back it up.

Then I went and got the experience. Engineering, the military, coaching, sales, software, identity systems. Each one filled in another piece, taught me something about how things hold together and how they fail. I write because the synthesis still happens, and now there's actually something behind it.

For most of my life I kept the writing private. Fear of failure on one side, fear of success on the other, both rationalised as not-yet-ready. I'm done with that. The essays are the slowest-compounding work I do, and they're the part that's mine alone.

Contact

I respond to every email I get. Love having pen-pals. Email me at sam@samue.lk and I assure you, you'll get a response.