• Solid As A Rock

    There’s something about islands that evokes a deep kind of wonder — and a deeper kind of resilience.

    Malta’s not a country that shouts. It doesn’t have the scale or the swagger of Italy, or the gloss and glamour of the French Riviera. It’s small, sure — an unassuming dot on the map. But that dot’s been holding the line for centuries. Against weather, war, colonisers, corruption — whatever the century’s thrown at it.

    In fact, Malta’s resilience once changed the course of history.

    During the Second World War, this little island found itself again under siege — starving, battered, out of options. Operation Pedestal — a desperate, near-impossible convoy mission — was launched to get supplies through. Against all odds, one ship, the SS Ohio, limped into the Grand Harbour, practically held afloat by the ships on either side of her. Maltese people cheered, half in relief, half in disbelief. My grandfather, a 7 year-old boy, was one of them in that crowd. If the Ohio hadn’t made it, Malta might have fallen. And if Malta had fallen, everything else — North Africa, the Mediterranean campaign — could have unravelled.

    If that ship hadn’t come in, I might not be here to write this.

    There’s a particular kind of strength that comes from geography. Malta’s been in the middle of everything and has belonged to no one for very long. It’s been used, celebrated, bombed, sold off, built up, and left behind — sometimes all in the same decade. The land remembers all of it. You see it in the way the limestone wears its age. In the way the buildings refuse to be modern, even when they try.

    It’s imperfect. But it’s not trying to be anything else. And that’s where the resilience sits. In the contradictions. In the fact that you can be standing in a UNESCO World Heritage site and still smell frying pastizzi and hear someone shouting over a football match from a window with laundry flapping in the breeze. That’s Malta. History and mess and pride, all jammed in together.

    And when you look at the geography — a rock with barely any fresh water, blistering summers, and a location that’s made it both vital and vulnerable — you realise that the real miracle isn’t survival. It’s the way this place keeps shaping itself around the chaos, again and again.

    Solid. Undeniably solid.

  • Born In Winter

    I used to find motivational speakers like Tony Robbins really helpful to listen to in the early part of my career. I wasn’t expecting some overnight transformation or quick fix, but there was something about the confidence and directness in the way he delivered his message that really resonated with me.

    One idea that’s stuck with me over the years is his way of talking about winter — and what it means to begin something in a time of hardship. Winter, he describes, is about being born into struggle. It’s cold, uncertain, and often lonely. But it’s also where resilience is built. If you can learn how to survive and grow in winter, you’re in a much stronger place when spring finally comes.

    That idea has come back to me time and again, especially when I think about the generation I’m part of.

    We entered working life just in time for the global financial crisis. All the talk was about the credit crunch and a shrinking economy.

    Then came years of austerity, Brexit, and deepening global destabilisation.

    Just as you might have found your footing, a pandemic arrived — the first of its scale since the Spanish flu. And now, even as we try to move forward, it feels like there’s always another crisis around the corner — geopolitical tension, economic uncertainty, the climate emergency. The world feels more fragile, more unpredictable, and less secure than the one we were told to prepare for.

    But rather than feeling crushed by all of that, I find myself seeing the positive. We were born in winter — and we’ve learned how to live in it.

    There’s a strength that comes from starting out in difficult times. We’ve had to be more adaptable, more resilient, and more creative with the paths we take. And while it would be nice to believe that things will settle down soon, the truth is we might just be living through a new kind of normal — one where change is constant, and certainty is rare.

    Spring may come. But even if it doesn’t, we’ve learned how to survive in the cold.

  • You’re The Tip Of An Iceberg

    Let’s go back 20 generations. That’s roughly 500 years – give or take – depending on how early people started having children in your family tree. We’re talking Tudors, plagues, revolutions, the whole lot.

    You start with 2 parents.
    Then 4 grandparents.
    Then 8 great-grandparents.
    Then 16 great-great-grandparents.
    Then 32 great-great-great-grandparents.
    Then 64 great-great-great-great-grandparents.
    Then 128 great-great-great-great-great-grandparents.
    Then 256 great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparents.
    Then 512 great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparents.
    Then 1,024 ancestors 10 generations back – roughly 300 years ago.
    Then 2,048 from 11 generations ago.
    Then 4,096 at 12 generations.
    8,192 at 13.
    16,384 at 14.
    32,768 at 15.
    65,536 at 16.
    131,072 at 17.
    262,144 at 18.
    524,288 at 19.
    And finally… 1,048,576 ancestors, 20 generations back – around 500 years ago.

    Over a million people. Just in that one generation. And if you add up all the ancestors from generation 1 to 20, the number’s even bigger – over two million in total.

    Of course, it’s not quite that simple. People married cousins, villages were small, and sometimes family trees loop back on themselves. It’s called pedigree collapse (a weird name, but a real thing). Still, it’s wild to think that over a million separate lives might have shaped yours – genetically, culturally, geographically.

    99.99% of them we’ll never even know the names of. But they’re all in there somewhere. Each one adding a line to the story that ended up with you.

  • The Quiet Things That No One Ever Knows

    It’s hard to describe, but there’s a word I once came across that helped me name it: sonder—the realisation that every single person around you is living a life as full and vivid and tangled as your own. Their own hopes, dreams, regrets, routines, heartbreaks. Their own inherited madness and quiet pride.

    You’ll never know their story. But for a moment, if you let it hit you, it’s overwhelming. The sheer scale of it. The infinite stories playing out just beyond your line of sight.

    I feel it most on planes, in doctors’ waiting rooms, hospital corridors, or sometimes just wandering around the shops—places where people’s guards are down and time stretches a bit. You catch a flicker of someone’s life in a gesture or a line of conversation, and you realise: I’ll never know what that meant to them. I’ll never know the full story. But it was their story. It mattered.

    That kind of awareness can make the world feel crowded and tender at the same time. Your own life might feel impossibly rich and personal—flooded with hormones, full of emotional peaks and troughs—but it’s all been felt before, over and over again. No feeling is truly unique to you.

    A blur of strangers becomes a tapestry. A routine moment becomes a stage for quiet epics you’ll never witness. And suddenly, the mundane is no longer mundane.

    It doesn’t make life easier, really. But it makes it richer. I try to carry that with me—a bit of wonder, a bit of softness. Because behind every passing face is someone who’s living through something.

    And if you remember that, even just occasionally, it changes how you move through the world.

  • New Beginnings and Familiar Returns

    It’s been over a decade since I last wrote something that wasn’t tied to work. Not a proposal, not a self-promotional post, not a carefully worded strategic email. Just putting thoughts into words—for no reason other than to figure out what I think. The kind of words that don’t need to justify themselves. That don’t have an end goal. That just feel worth getting out of your head.

    Back in the earlier days of my career, I found blogging to be a kind of outlet. I had several websites, wrote the odd guest article, and used the space to stretch beyond 180 characters and try out new ideas—some half-formed, some attention seeking, some that still make sense now.

    Over time, like a lot of things, that habit faded. Life and work moved forward. Writing became more instrumental. Everything became more “on-message.” And that’s fine—it’s part of the territory. But something gets lost when every sentence has to be justifiable and re-enforce your persona. The joy of simply reflecting—without needing to prove anything—quietly disappears.

    And so here I am, starting again. Not for clicks. Not to build a “personal brand.” Just to reconnect with that slightly freer part of myself that used to enjoy writing for its own sake.

    This time around, though, the context is different. I’m writing (or more accurately, dictating) this while doing laps slowly around our dining table. It’s late at night. My wife is in our bedroom, trying to bank a few hours of sleep. And I’m holding our newborn son in one arm while The Simpsons plays softly in the background—more for me than for him.

    I am shattered. I am frayed. I am more present than ever. And yet I have the desire to express and store my ideas in the beautiful time capsule that is the internet. Perhaps eradicating hours a day of scrolling Twitter/X has freed up some mental capacity in me to create, alongside my newfound responsibilities.

    Becoming a dad is a strange and enormous shift. My experience is obviously not unique—it’s happened billions of times throughout history. But it’s entirely personal to me. I wasn’t sure if we’d have children. I had, at one point, reached a kind of peace with the idea that maybe we wouldn’t. And now here he is. A whole new human being, half-asleep in my arms, changing everything.

    I’m only just beginning to understand the outer edges of what that means. The shock of frustration I didn’t know I could feel. The deep infatuation that shows up in strange moments. The surreal exhaustion and beauty of it all. It’s early days, and I know I’ll look back at this from some future vantage point and see just how little I knew—but I want to capture this moment while I’m in it. Because it already feels fleeting—something that will be hard to hold onto and truly relive later.

    And maybe that’s what this blog is for. Not to write about parenthood necessarily, or about work, or about anything in particular. But just to record the thoughts that pass through in this season of life. To make sense of the changes. The evolution. To leave some kind of breadcrumb trail I can return to later.

    Some posts might be short. Some might go nowhere. Some might contradict others. But that’s part of it. I want this to be a space where I don’t have to think about what others think.

    I still look back at old blog posts and cringe a little, but also smile. There’s something oddly satisfying about recognising the younger version of yourself and how you used to think. Maybe I’ll do the same with this one day—look back from my 50s and marvel at how raw and weird and lovely this season was.

    For now, though, I’m just here. Writing again. Starting over. Holding a small boy who’s barely a month old, and re-learning how to put my thoughts into words—not for anyone else, but for me.

    Let’s see where it goes.