Jason Donnelly
Following the conclusion of a career in cricket, Jason has established himself as a project manager buying and selling property. Despite being a far contrast from the world stage he was previously on, he has found contentment in living a life for others.
Transcript
We’re doing the rounds just heading out to one of our sites. What I do is property development, basically buying land, subdividing it and selling it. I haven’t always been a property manager, it’s really only been in the last twelve months that I picked up this role after my career finished as a cricketer. Initially as a kid I just dreamed of playing sport and I idolised professional sports players. I started to progress in cricket and got the opportunity to start representing auckland. And then as I got older it was New Zealand in age group stuff and so basically from then I started realising a bit of that dream. So 6/7 years just trying to live the dream of a professional cricketer.
But it involved a heavy level of sacrifice in terms of moving away from family, moving away from friends; what you know. Not only training but having to pack your bags and leave to wherever you get the opportunity. And so for me that was basically every three or four/five months I was packing my bags and following the sum around. Whether that was in New Zealand or Australia or further apart overseas.
The dream of playing professional sport, whatever it looks like as a youngster quickly changes once you get into it. You realise that it’s not as glamorous and that’s where the hard work starts. Got brought into the church at the age of 20, so i’d been three years into my career as a sportsman. And it wasn’t a radical turnaround for me. When I was in the church all I wanted to do was keep playing professional sport. And it was all about me and my journey and what I had to do to go further. Quite a selfish sort of way of living and I kept on living that for probably two or three years into my christian walk. Ah I think that selfishness comes from that drive to be the best. But it’s for your own glory so you’re being the best for yourself. And so whenever you focus on yourself it’s all you do. You don’t focus on others because they’re not part of your journey.
Yeah looking back you have no understanding of how you may have affected others and stuff like that. Coming into church was instantly just being surrounded by awesome people. I don’t know if that’s God intervention or that’s just the way church is but for me I walked in there and I had 5 friends without even saying a word. People just came around. They loved me. They wanted to get to know my story, they wanted to hang out. They wanted to go do stuff. My dream was all about me and my success and that had nothing to do with anyone else or the church or people. And so I think it doesn’t matter what the dream is, I think as long as it’s for the right purpose, you’ll always be ok. You know I mean for so long I was in that professional sporting world and for some it might have looked like I was really enjoying it. But in reality I wasn’t. And now i’m stuck walking around in mud and just having the time of my life. Seeing satisfaction on people’s face when they move into their new home. It beats being in the professional world of sport. It beats hanging out with the guys or travelling the world stage and getting paid to do it. You couldn’t pay me enough to do this, I just love it.