Hello, Luke here.
You’ve likely signed up for a book, newsletter, website or course of mine over the last few years. Thank you for that support, very much. I just wanted to let you know about this new project. There’s nothing you need to do, just keep an eye out for emails on personal and professional development, if you still want them. The emails will come from here, rather than from MailChimp.
In a nutshell, I’m writing this newsletter, “Collected”, to offer ideas and to create discussion around overcoming the machine-like stresses of modern work and life.
The ideas will be a sort of overlay, compatible with any belief, philosophy or way of life. They are modular, for anyone to use in their life, at any place or time. Ways to get back to yourself when you drift. Ways to help you do more of what matters most to you. No money or charges involved.
That’s the short version.
Why me/you
Now the slightly longer take…
As an adopted British, half-Korean (rest-Orkney and part-Norwegian) kid of the 80s, with Irish and English adoptive parents/grandparents, raised Catholic but since gone rogue (very rogue), I have at times felt a little lost in terms of identity.
To try to counter this I met my birth mother in my early 20s. This was good in itself but it didn’t help to then learn that my birth father also went rogue, somewhere in South-East Asia. DNA tests placed half of my genes in that area, but offered no links to potential relatives or clues to confirm a true place of origin. As far as I know he would most likely have a full life and family somewhere in Korea. I have no name or other information to go on with.
You could say I’ve learned to live with a degree of uncertainty and doubt. To become slightly philosophical about things. I was sometimes told I was actually like this from a young age, an old head, etc. so maybe it’s just part of who I am anyway, but I’ve definitely had my fair share of unwise moments too.
I liked school. All seven of them. We moved around a bit growing up, my parents used a Navy exit payment to try a new life in Canada. For two brief years, at least. French immersion classes and plenty of outdoor adventures probably left the biggest mark from the period. Not forgetting the Canadian culture of kindness, too, despite a certain teacher apparently voicing some untypically closed-minded opinions on this boy who they thought was from the “Indian Reserve”. At times I wished I was, the pow wows were a real spectacle. The native culture may well have struck a chord with me too.
Back in England it was a new area, new schools; the teen years. I continued to enjoy French (and computers) and ended up studying for a degree in French, in Paris. Then, when that was done, reality hit and I continued working the service jobs of those teen years while setting up a translation practice to capitalise on the education I was fortunate enough to have had access to, at a time when the cost was relatively affordable.
I later started to learn Swedish, added that string to my translation bow, did some limited travel around Northern Europe and the Mediterranean while working remotely, then came home to set up shop more permanently in England.
Some 15 years later, still freelance translating, with a translation agency and online platform having done “OK” and “not a lot”, respectively, I married, had a birth child, an adopted child and now all of us are squared away in our humble but loving home. It has been a busy decade, for sure. We should, touch wood, hopefully be entering a relatively stable period from now on.
Throughout that time I continued to contemplate my sense of self and how it had come to be formed.
Things accelerated on that front when I, nearly 4 years ago now, turned to the financial markets to consider self-managed pension options (I know, I know). I got drawn into a rabbit hole that completely and unexpectedly forced me to look “into the void”, confronting myself.
There is something about exposing yourself to the chaos of the markets that really makes you reflect. You have to overcome weaknesses and baser instincts. It is the most intense type of work I’ve ever done, and I’ve served merry gamblers at racecourses, 10 deep at the bar, for 12+ hours straight. You are forced to work on your mind, to seek out your biases in trade journals, locked in a constant battle against highly informed and well-capitalised adversaries. It’s all there in trading. A mirror for the self. And so I’ve come, perhaps more quickly than I might have done otherwise, to become more introspective than ever.
The outlook and methods I now use to get through it all are based around wholly secular notions of health, careful productivity, kindness and calm rationality. I strongly suspect they could help others from all backgrounds to deal with tough situations in new ways, to get plans back on track or to potentially even find their true self once again. That’s the “why me” part.
Why you? We all have our own “origin story” carving away at our sense of self, eroding and building it in different ways over time. If you’d care to share it, I’d like to hear how you’ve got to where you are, what’s going on with you now, and from that I hope to be able to help you to create some calm, contented and successful times for the years to come. Whatever success means to you.
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Hopefully this strikes a chord and you’d like to stick around and join in the conversation. Feel free to forward this email to any colleagues or family who might find this useful. Posts will be 3x a week, Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.
(PS - Comments below!)
The self identity issue appears when your are travelling a lot, when you have your family members far away from you, when you work in sky scrapers, when you are getting older.
As for myself I was born in Belarus. For the last 7 years I was working in Russian. The issue is financial situation. You try to survive and raise your kids somehow without even having a shelter or roof over you head (you understand if you break and have no salary on due time you will be kicked out of the appartment you rent).
I understood that if you have a pieace of land, a house standing on your land then there is no self identity issues.... Even though this hose could easily be take away from because you are living in a country with one man law...