It’s interesting, I think, to hear the answers people give when asked to describe who they are. Naturally, people usually revert to the old job or career-related associations, or to that of their kids. I was the same. It’s still too easy for me, particularly when out networking, to refer to myself as a business owner (I run two businesses - digital marketing and travel related), or a managing director. But, I’m simply bored of that, it’s so not who I am, it’s just what I do.
How would I describe myself in a few words? Perpetually curious. Eternally optimistic. A free spirit. A believer in something much bigger. Greater than the sum of my parts. Part of something much bigger. Accepting of change, because I’ve had to.
Reflecting on this, I often wonder where it all came from and why I’m embarking on this phase of my life’s journey. Early on in life, I guess I had the time and experiences that most kids didn’t get and certainly don’t get today. It was that I think led to the development of my interests and inquisitiveness.
As a kid, I always lived outside of the village, so to speak. I usually had to make my own entertainment, exploring the countryside and tinkering with old radios and tv’s - the valve variety. Back in the ‘60s and ‘70s, there was no internet and technology as we know it today. I remember getting my first transistor radio as a birthday present from my mates in 1973, the same year Capital Radio started. My dad encouraged me to explore electronics as a hobby, and so the journey began.
I’ve always had a fascination for the workings of the world. My hobbies encompassed not just electronics, but physics and chemistry as well. My dad’s garden shed became my lab and the scene of many a misadventure. I delighted in putting together very high voltage generators made from old TVs, and building coils and the like, then using them to demonstrate the effects of high voltage on different things; alas, from time to time, that unintentionally included me.
Later on in life, I studied electronics and physics and began to pursue a career in both. I found it interesting, but at the same time infuriatingly restrictive. Physics, being more an institution at the time, one was bound to pursue that which agreed with current thinking rather than what lies on the fringes, and that frustrated me. Don’t get me wrong though, still a teenager and entering my early 20’s, my first job was highly entertaining and gave me access to facilities and supplies that you could only dream about - if you are so included to dream of such things; such as a fully stocked electronics department, chemistry and physics departments too. But all that adolescent fun had to come to an end at some point - a mortgage saw to that.
Still, I’ve always had a problem with people who tell me not to do something, but when asked why, either clearly have no clue or just bull shit me and that includes my parents, although I was able to demonstrate some level of respect to them while simultaneously ignoring said ‘advice’. As it turned out, some of that advice was pretty good and had it been taken, would have averted a couple of near disasters, hospital visits, and even the Tinnitus I suffer from to this very day (which involved a big explosion, another story, so perhaps another time).
The ‘80s was really the start of the internet. I joined a startup company at the forefront of data communications. High-speed connectivity at the time was the latest generation of 19.2Kbs modems, but Kilostream at 64kbs was the new kid on the block and I helped design and develop the first Kilostream multiplexers that BT implemented in their leased line networks. Suffice to say, I enjoyed a pretty lengthy career in data communications spanning around 30 years.
The business travel and a desire to explore took me to over 60 countries. I’ve been privileged to live and work in the US, Southeast Asia and Europe. Living and working in multicultural environments and experiencing the trials the people of developing countries face, has been a humbling experience, especially the that gained on a few church-related mission projects in Laos and Thailand.
Working for other companies consumed much of my early career. The first 20 mostly working within Europe and the US, ending with joining what was to become quite a successful startup in California and living in the Bay Area for nearly three years. Change came big time though and I left the US to take up a senior position at a startup in Singapore - a huge cultural change for me. All I can say is that the events that led me to Singapore in the first place were tinged with both incredible excitement and seriously deep personal pain, but were transformative.
Singapore was the beginning of something very new - leading to a new outlook on life.
The demise of the company I was working for in Singapore, just 8 months after uprooting myself from the US, brought change again into my life. However, with the prospect of essentially loosing everything I’d built over the prior 20 years, but the help of the lady who is now my wife, I began anew. She, you see, is quite a humble person, a native of Southeast Asia, never one to want to own much and one of life’s true free spirits - almost the complete antithesis of me at the time. She saw my creativity through the lens (photography is another passion I’ve had since the ‘80s) and motivated me to establish a photographic agency in Singapore - not as easy as it may seem. For the time I was there, I ran both the photographic company and a high tech consultancy. It was quite successful and I can count several top hotel brands and numerous architectural firms among my clients and Her Majesty’s Government.
After Singapore came the USA again, but this time the wild west - Oregon. Having spent much of my career visiting and working for US companies, this was an easier transition. Both my wife and I were very familiar with the US, she being educated there. Working for both a private aircraft company and a local ad agency, the six years or so we were there presented many challenges, but were good years and introduced us to the real outdoors and real snow again. There’s nothing quite like hiking through central Oregon and the Cascade Mountains and being at one with nature. We became quite good mushroom specialists too.
Circumstances changed again though and we decided to return to my home country, the UK in 2012. This wasn’t entirely planned. But as it turned out, the timing was perfect. We managed to return just before the immigration rules in the UK changed, and as I'd been overseas for some 15 years, I counted this as quite fortuitous. However, our life was still largely outside of the UK and so we effectively had 6 weeks to establish one of us in a job before available cash ran out. Finding it a bit of a catch 22 situation with no permanent abode, trying to open a bank account (no mean feat) and find a rental apartment (which required a bank account), it was, to say the least, a very stressful time. That said, fortune does appear to favour the brave and shortly after the six weeks, my wife got a nice little job, which allowed me the time to set up my own digital marketing business. Looking back over the past several years, I sometimes wonder how we did it, especially as I personally have uprooted my life entirely four times now. Done roaming? Maybe, but I do still have a bit of wanderlust about me.
I mentioned the church earlier. I went to a C of E primary school, with a church attached. Although not a devout Christian, it certainly influenced my upbringing. Later, while living in Singapore, I rejoined the church and went through confirmation. I’ve even worn a cassock and delivered communion. That said, many things trouble me about religion in general and although I believe in Jesus Christ and have a healthy respect for other regions and their prophets, deep questions linger on. For one thing, I’ve always wondered why gods require subservience. Why would they? They are omniscient, omnipresent and all powerful. To suggest otherwise seems to me to endow them with human qualities, such as when the bible says that God is a jealous God. Don’t get me wrong, I believe in a god-like presence that pervades the universe as we know it, and that Jesus and the other prophets were in some way related to that. I wouldn’t disagree either that Jesus was the Son of God, although my take on this has changed over the years and has grown with my own developing level of spirituality and beliefs in how the universe actually works. However, I’m starting to stray into another subject area. I prefer to consider myself as a free thinker, a respectful one and someone who’s not above sitting in a church and giving thanks for others and for my life.
A final thought is this: My own inquisitiveness and willingness to learn about both religion, spirituality and science has led me to this point in my life, the many questions and beliefs I now hold and the wish I have to share this experience through the creation of this website.