Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, America, Attitude & Aptitude, Australia, China, Corona Virus, Dad, Daddyhood, Emotion, England, Family, Hong Kong, Jill, LaLaLand, Mum, Mum & Dad, My Fatherhood, New Zealand, Nottingham, Otis, Parents
The above photo was taken back in 2020.
We were living in Fulham.
Everyone was working from home.
And we suspected Otis may have had COVID.
As it turned out, he didn’t – thankfully.
But I love that photo.
The closeness.
The intimacy.
The caring Mum and the curious kid.
A shared moment ruined by me coming in and taking a pic – as usual, hahaha.
But who can blame me? Those two are everything to me.
And the older I get, the more I realise how much time I didn’t spend with them.
That realisation started with COVID.
While the pandemic was so devastating to so many – it was very good to me.
I got to be with my family for longer than I’d ever been in our time together.
Waking up together.
Breakfast, lunch and dinner together.
Putting Otis to bed and then going to bed with Jill at the same time.
EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.
Now I know for so many that’s a regular thing but for me it wasn’t and the experience was wonderful and confronting.
Wonderful for how it made me feel. Confronting for how I had allowed that to happen.
Don’t get me wrong … I love work. Or should I say I love parts of work.
And as much as it may not be cool to say anymore, but I loved the travel.
Not being on a plane for the COVID years – bar, moving to NZ – felt like a genuine loss.
Not at first – initially it felt amazing, given how regularly I had been travelling – but after 2+ years, I was ready to hear those engines whir into life. Just not so regularly as I had before … because flying internationally at least once a week, every week for years was just plain idiotic.
And while I don’t want to let all of it go, I have been changing big parts of how I am choosing to live and it all came from something my Dad once said to me.
You see, my Dad had quite an eclectic early professional life.
Not just changing jobs, but whole industries.
I remember asking him why he had done it and he said this:
“I love you and your Mum. So if I’m going to be away from you both for most of the day, I better like what I’m doing because nothing would be so disrespectful as being away for something I hate”
Now I appreciate the privilege in that statement.
There are many who don’t have the opportunity to chase after things that interest them.
And for my Dad, that was enabled by the stability of my brilliant Mum – similar to what Jill has done for me in allowing me to uproot us every few years for an adventure in some other far distant part of the world.
But while I’ve generally enjoyed what I have done … as I get older, it’s becoming more and more apparent that I want to ensure my family is given even greater prioritisation in what I do. That doesn’t mean they weren’t before … but I realise they could have been prioritised a fuck load more.
In some ways, it’s a perfect time for this to happen.
I’m approaching a point in life where some decisions will have to be made regarding my future.
What do I want to do?
Who do I want to do it with – and for?
What do I want to explore, experience and achieve?
Where is the best place for us to be located?
What are the conditions we need to protect what we have?
For me, these are revelation questions.
Previously, I just went with whatever excited/scared me/us the most.
And while this doesn’t mean we’re now happy to settle – because let’s face it, I suck at it, thanks to my only-child inspired, competitive, curious and annoyingly ambitious energy – it does mean these questions ensure my/our decisions are focused on ensuring my family get the best of me, not just what is left of me because the one thing covid taught me is nothing is as important as being together.
It’s pathetic I needed a global pandemic to really drive that home.
But to paraphrase my dad, nothing would be as disrespectful to my family than ignoring what became one of the most precious times of my life with my family.
Thanks to Easter, I get to spend the next 4 days with them … hopefully eating chocolate.
So wherever you are and whoever you’re with, I hope you get to spend it with someone that matters.
Even if that’s just yourself.
Happy holiday … and I apologise for the indulgent, happy-clappy post of today.
A few weeks ago, Jill and I were chatting about plans when we started talking about where we wanted to end up.
By that, I mean, where we would want to be when we die.
As in location.
Of course, at the moment of death, the primary desire is to be close to each other … but I am talking about after that. When all the tears have gone and life has recommenced.
Sure, I shouldn’t care as I sure-as-hell won’t know … but apart from being a sentimental fuck, the reality is when you have lived in a lot of places, a lot of places become important to you so we just had this surreal conversation about ‘resting place’.
For reasons I’m still not quite sure of, I asked this question on Linkedin.
I presume my driving motivation was that there must be other people who are in similar situations – at least in living in multiple countries – and I wanted to see what they thought.
So I wrote this …
And while I got a lot of people dismissing my viewpoint – saying the only thing I should care about is being with my family [thanks for that folks, even though I literally said that in my post] … one person sent something that was pretty wonderful.
OK, it didn’t actually help answer the question I originally had, but it’s a wonderful way to imagine the final moment.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Australia, Brand, Jill, My Fatherhood, Otis, Parents, Technology
A few weeks ago I went to pick up Jill and Otis from the airport.
They’d been in Australia to see ‘granny’ and had a lovely time.
Anyway, when I saw Otis, he immediately told me about an “amazing cool giant robot face” he’d seen in Sydney and showed me a photo he’d taken.
As soon as I saw it, I realised it was part of project I did with the founder of Gentle Monster.
Telling him this resulted in Good and Bad news.
Good: I’m now [Finally, if temporarily] cool.
Bad: He wants me to bring it home.
I’ve written a lot in the past about how Valentine’s Day is more about fear than love.
I’ve written about how I purposely proposed to Jill before Valentine’s Day, rather than immediately before it.
I’ve also talked about how for the first 10+ years of our marriage, we never spent this day together.
But today I’m going to do something different.
Don’t get me wrong, I still hate Valentine’s Day – or at least, the way it tries to shame people into engagement – but it’s time to write something that honours the day.
You see right now, I love my wife more than I may ever have loved her.
That’s not some rose-tinted glasses bullshit, it’s true.
Now of course I’ve always loved my wife … but we’re at a place where things just feel even more special. Of course we’ve had our ups and downs – mainly caused by me – but we’re currently in a place where I feel we’re stronger, closer and more united than ever.
I won’t lie, it feels wonderful.
Not that things weren’t great before, but there is a different calmness that now sits between us. I can’t quite explain it, but it even more special.
I don’t know how this happened.
Maybe it’s due to our age.
Or maybe where we live.
Or how we live.
Or maybe it’s to do with Otis.
Or – most likely – it’s more to do with the choices and priorities I’m making.
But whatever the reason … the foundation feels like it’s even stronger than ever and after almost 20 years together, that’s an amazing thing to feel.
I always knew I was going to marry someone from ‘overseas’.
Maybe it was because my Mum was Italian or because my parents kept reiterating a life of adventure existed just beyond England’s shores … but it always felt inevitable I’d end up with someone not from England.
To think we went from meeting in Australia to living together in Singapore in 6 weeks seems even more incredible as I get older.
Of course that was all down to Jill.
That she was willing to take a leap of faith for a bloke she hardly knew.
A bloke who needed an emergency operation within 3 weeks of meeting so the first time she ever spoke to my Mum was to say, “hello, Rob is in hospital”.
A bloke who said, “we’ll only leave Australia for 2 years” and then proceeded to move her further and further away every 2 years … forcing her to start again while I walked into a ready-made world, thanks to work.
It’s easy to give platitudes early in a relationship … but to still feel lucky and grateful so long into a relation is – at least to me – a sign of something special.
And that’s what Jilly is.
A incredibly special human.
I love her. Always have. But even more today.
And while I could go on, I know she would rather I didn’t.
Mainly because – unlike her husband – she hates being the centre of attention. So instead I’ll leave you with one of the most beautiful stories of love I’ve ever read.
I’ve written about it before.
And I appreciate many would think it’s incredibly sad.
But nothing captures what true love is, like the last sentence. However, just like the real thing, you have to go through a lot to really understand it and earn it – which is why I ask you to read the whole piece, rather than just skip to end for the one-night stand version of it.
Happy Valentine’s Day to everyone.
I hope you have found or known love like Dan Aykroyd has.
And if not, there’s always time.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Emotion, Empathy, Experience, Jill, My Fatherhood, Otis, Parents
First of all, I know Otis is 8.
But he said this to me when he was still 7 so deal with it.
As I have written previously, Otis was diagnosed last year with dysgraphia.
Dysgraphia is a form of dyslexia – specially writing and some motor skills, like holding a pen.
It doesn’t limit the capacity for learning, but it does affect how you do it.
I also wrote how amazing his school has been in helping him deal with this … letting him use technology for written assignments [text to speech] while very gently helping him keep practicing writing with a pen.
The effect has been remarkable.
He is happier, more expressive and even cheekier than before.
It genuinely feels like he has been freed from a feeling of oppression. Of not being good enough. And now he recognises his ability and his possibility. It’s so, so beautiful and I can never thank his school and teachers enough.
Of course, this is something he’s going to have to live with for the rest of his life. But thanks to his school – and technology – he doesn’t have to fear dysgraphia, he just can get on with it.
And get on with it he is.
A few weeks before the end of the year, he proudly showed us some work he had written.
As in, written with a pen, not technology.
That he showed us was incredible – because previously he did all he could to hide his writing from us. Whether it was because he was ashamed by it or simply believed it couldn’t be good as his classmates as he wasn’t as quick as them is open to question, but it is not hard to imagine that may be the case.
But here he was, showing us what he’d done.
I said to him, how good it was to which he replied with an viewpoint that was not only incredibly mature … but is a valuable lesson for anyone and everyone facing challenges in their life.
He said:
“Just because you struggle with some things doesn’t mean you can’t improve”.
How incredible is that?
He was seven when he said it. SEVEN!
That’s better advice than anything you hear from professional life coaches.
So to my dearest Otis …
I’m so, so proud of you.
Your attitude towards life is wonderful and inspirational.
And of course, you’re right.
You can improve.
You can always get better.
It’s not about glory, it’s about improvement.
Thank you for reminding me that life isn’t all black and white.
That how we evolve and improve and engage and embrace life is all done in the grey.
You’re such a brilliant human and we’re so proud to be your Mum and Dad.