First blog of my life

With a deep breath I am writing the first words of my first blog.  Its already tougher than I thought.  On one of the many plane journeys I have taken in the past couple of months of my long trip with my wife I watched the Julia and Julie movie and was impressed by how fast, and how clearly and articulately the heroine was able to type really interesting prose.  I don't think that was that true to life.  Anyway on with my first words.

I retired from a small Bermuda investment firm called Bermuda Investment Advisory Services Limited (BIAS for short -- www.bias.bm) back in September and my ex-partner, Robert Pires, said that as I like to write and travel I should write short essays about the places I visit, the topics I find interesting (of any sort) and in general stuff that I think that both my ex-colleagues would find interesting and enlightening and also BIAS' clients many of whom I have built up incredibly strong bonds with over the years.  I don't much like the idea of restrictions (such as deadlines!!!) on my post-retirement time and also thought the idea a bit pretentious.  Who would want to read the stuff I want to write about?  Maybe I'm right at least on the second part but in my travels which thus far on this trip have taken me from Bermuda to Canada to London to Dubai to Hong Kong to Australia and currently in New Zealand before getting going again to the USA before finally making it home to Bermuda in a month's time, I have seen a lot of new things, met a bunch of really interesting (some weird too) people, read a lot of local newspapers and generally had my eyes re-opened (which it should always do when you travel, I guess as a corporate guy I was a bit too business focused and therefore jaded about what was going on around me).

There's a lot of really interesting stuff out there and I hope to be able to write about some of it in an interesting and educated manner.  OK I have my own personal beliefs and am thoroughly opinionated and of course tolerate no view other than my own.  But I have been retired now since the end of September so hope that those extreme bits of me have been tempered a little by now!

For Christmas, my eldest son Alex gave me a journal to record the events that are happening during my travels.  I haven't kept a hand written anything for years so it has been in itself an eye opening experience.  First of all, I hadn't realised my hand writing was so bad.  The first few lines are OK but then the scrawl and chicken scratches appear and just get worse.  That's using the computer for years of course and it has to be said that it won't get any better and that the young of today who just use electronic stuff will be virtually illiterate in a generation earlier's terms.

Second, is that once you get into it, your mind races ahead of what you are physically able to write so you have to either speed up your hand writing (suffering hideous writing, spelling errors and grammatical heresy along the way) or force yourself to slow down a little and actually formulate what you are trying to write in a proper clear and coherent manner.  There's no spell check or back spacing in hand writing so those errors you make end up as massive blotches across the page.  Fear not though, through repeated use you do get better at writing so give it a go some time!

Third, you don't just write about the stuff you're thinking will be an interesting point of view.  You always leave that for later when you have time for reflection.  If you don't you forget about the point you were trying to write about.  So you use a lot of bullet points, abbreviations, key words, etc.  And of course you hope that you remember for example just what those words "Aussie beer sea" mean a few weeks later.  I'm still wondering so any ideas, please send them my way.

Fourth, you also write about the stuff you feel.  That really surprised me.  I don't think I've written about that for at least 20 years.  I certainly never talk about it.  And if I was being honest probably don't think about it much either.  And its true, most time it makes no sense at all.  So does that mean men have no feelings or does it mean that we are rubbish at articulating them?  Or is it just that I am?  Not sure but I am keeping my journal still and hope to see some improvement.  I don't agree with much of what I've written about regarding my feelings later on when I re-read it, by the way.  It sounds self indulgent and a bit cry baby, I think.  But like I said, I'll keep on giving it a go.

I have a few days available to me so will try to start creating some interesting posts from my journal to date.  No personal stuff though.