Long time reader, first time blogger

Well, here we go!

Welcome - if anyone's out there! A lot of stuff goes through this head of mine, from the banal to the banal. I was about to type in "profound", but let's not go that far. I'm just going to sit here and write whatever happens to be on my mind, and you can decide if you're interested to hear more. Well, I guess that much is obvious to regular blog visitors, so we'll just jump right in then.

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I've been drifting in life for some time now. In fact, for a long time now. A really long time. I don't know where I'm headed, but there always seems to be something interesting ahead to look forward to.

I'm off to Mae Sot, Thailand, in a few weeks to join my wife, who is already there. We're going to help Burmese refugees who've come across the border to seek asylum, and learn new life-skills for a new future. Well, we`re going to offer help - and do what we can. It's really the last thing that I thought I'd end up doing, but life's like that sometimes: "Here's a crazy idea!" and instead of simply discarding it, let's think about it (for about 10 minutes!) and then see how we can make it happen. We've had a roller-coaster of drama for the last few years, with high highs, and low, low, lows.

 I'm also a closet maker-of-things; I'm happiest when I've got an idea to draw, a business to design, a project to buy materials for, or tools in my hand, and just plain making things. The business ideas sadly seem to stay just that - ideas, and many other drawings and designs live in a scrapbook, and still others live only in my head. There`s hardly time to start many of them, as more keep flooding in. Some do make it to the workbench, and some make it there, only to die a death from never being touched again! I don't even care what it is that I make, as long as I'm doing the making. In the last year alone, I've made a coffee table, a model yacht, a faux-tudor style feature-wall, written a song for the homeless,  made a shoe-cupboard, drawn a caricature for a birthday present, written and illustrated a children`s picture book, and built a wooden bike. A wooden recumbent bike. What the hell I think I need that for, I still don't know. But It does give me a satisfaction that can't be had from simply parting with cash and getting something from a shop. The stuff I make can't be bought from a shop. Maybe it can, but it doesn't look the same. (Probably looks better!) That's the kind of experience my soul craves, and that's what I want to tell you about here.



At the end of the day, as my friend Brian says, you just have to go for it sometimes. It may turn out to be crap, but it just might be great, too.

If you try, you risk failure. If you don' try, you ensure it.