Published 9 January 2019
It is a funny thing when something forces you to reflect on the life you are living.
Karta is growing fast.
He is the teenager I always wish I could have been. I probably spoil him, but not in the usual way. I do not have bags of money to throw at him. What I do have is love, attention, and the desire to give him the kind of support I did not always have.
My love for him is something I did not know I was capable of before he arrived.
He is my world.
December 2018 into January 2019
This piece gathers a small cluster of posts from the turn of 2019. They were less about a single event and more about a shift in attitude: work, writing, money, learning, and the need to stop giving time away too cheaply.
Published 21 November 2018
So, I made it to fifty.
The big five-o.
At first, I thought I might not have made the best use of my time on this planet so far.
But I was wrong.
Late 2017 into 2018
This piece gathers a cluster of posts and fragments from late 2017 into 2018. They circled the same questions: money, work, health, social media, family, and the strange pull towards a quieter life. Rather than preserving each one separately, I have gathered them here as a single record of that period. Be warned, this is a long one!
Published 3 December 2017
So I’ve almost made it to the half-century.
Will I manage another fifty?
I like to think I have decent genes. I’ll be fifty next November, which means nearly half a century of roaming around the planet in this big old meat suit of mine.
A friend told me today that someone he had been playing walking football with recently collapsed and died.
He was fifty-four.
He had some underlying medical conditions, but still. Fifty-four. Only a few years older than me.
That got me thinking.
Published 5 November 2017
This post will be short and sweet.
It is time for me to take the sabbatical I have been procrastinating about for the past couple of years.
As you probably know by now, I have an ongoing struggle with social media and how I use it. Many times in the past, I have said I would take a break. Mostly, I wanted to find some space for other things that matter to me.
Written 4th November 2017
A moment of clarity?
Despite my best efforts, I am having a hard time maintaining focus on anything.
It probably does not help that I have a massive head cold and feel like poo. But still, let me break it down.
Since the beginning of the year, I have tried hard to make things work. My ideas remain just that. Ideas. For a while, I thought about starting a few more blogs, then scrapped that idea. I threw myself back into photography, shot a wedding, produced some stock images of Dreamland for a friend, and not much else.
Written 28th October 2017
Time for walking.
All the fitness plans and all the people who create them do not really work for me. Spending days in a gym trying to become some ideal version of a man holds no appeal.
When I was young, I was out on my bicycle whenever I could. I rode everywhere. Friends’ houses. Shops. School. Anywhere my fleshy little pistons would take me.
I loved my bikes.
Written 25th October 2017
It’s official. I’ve realised that I’m having a midlife crisis.
For many months now, I’ve been struggling to find direction. When I really think about it, this has probably been going on for years.
Back in 2011, I was working as the projection manager at my local ten-screen multiplex. I was happy. My days were filled with screening films, building them up, breaking them down, and managing a team of four projectionists across the weekly shift pattern.
Life was good.
I was paid well for the work I did. I enjoyed the responsibility. I liked not having to deal with the public. The department felt almost like a business within a business. Our domain was hidden behind locked doors, projection booths, and quiet walkways, well away from prying eyes.
We felt good about the work. Most of the time, we were left to get on with it. The only time we really emerged was to collect film crates or return boxes to the collection point.
Mornings usually involved rehearsing the films we had built. We checked that the reels were spliced together in the correct order. We made sure everything was right before the first public performance.
Life was good.
It was fun.
Written 17th October 2017
I’m a planner.
I make plans every day.
Most of them would fulfil me in some way. The trouble is, they rarely happen as often as I would like.
So what am I supposed to do with that?
The first step is probably to look at where my planning succeeds and where it falls apart. Every day, my head fills with things I would like to do. Trips. Projects. Articles. Ideas. Possibilities.
A few months ago, I decided I needed to visit EICMA, the huge annual motorcycle trade show in Milan.
The plan was simple enough. Get a press pass, which I did. Borrow an Indian motorcycle. Ride to Milan. Take photographs along the way. Make notes. Write about the journey across several blogs when I got home.
Easy enough, right?
Not quite.
As usual, life got in the way.