Middle Aged White Man...Part One

It is not every day you will get to read a short piece about someone you have never heard of who for all intents and purposes has “achieved” almost nothing of what the public at large would call worthwhile or important or even interesting. But here you are.

I’m a fifty one year old man who is trying to work with the idea that when my death day comes, and I have the opportunity to look back through time and consider my life, I’ll be able to say to myself that yes, I gave it a good go and didn’t bottle it.

The path which got me here is of interest to nobody but myself and those in my orbit and I’m sure you’d switch off here if I were to elaborate too much, but I’ll just say that after way too many glasses of wine and a life I considered to be falling short of my best, I stopped drinking seven years ago and did a couple of degrees in the creative arts. And now I am here, writing this for an audience so small that I could read it to you all in my living room.

I think I have the same hopes, fears and desires as most people no matter where they come from or what they do and like you, I have considered this platform as a good place to get some of my thoughts out and set them free into the wild. If there is one thing I have learned as a creative, and I’m a little sad to say it took me almost fifty years, is that it really is about the journey and not the destination and that the process is the most important part of creativity with the outcome running in second place.

I would love you to read the things I write but it’s not a deal breaker as I am going to write it anyway, but in the same way that I hope an audience will make a connection with one of my paintings or photographs, I hope there might be something in my words which you can connect with. I’m not an expert on anything but myself and my rationale for being here is that as I discuss the things I do, the things I think and the things I make, we might find some common ground with trying to make sense of the bigger questions I know we all have.