“Allow me to re-introduce myself .....”

“Allow me to re-introduce myself .....”

These are the opening lines to Jay –Z’s Public Service Announcement.......sadly I don’t have Jay’s money or swagger so a quote will have to do.

It took me over 10 minutes to decide what to write, as my opening line, my 'Hello World' moment... and now its posted, in the back of my mind all I can think is, it sounds much better said than read! But anyway, this is my first post, I'm not great at writing, but I'm learning, I have no idea what I'm going to talk about, but I know some kind of introduction is in order.

So who am I? Its a question I’ve been struggling to answer lately, up until last December (6 months to the day actually) I was a subsea oil and gas engineer, designing equipment for the oil and gas market, I was doing my bit to keep the boys happy and ‘the boss’ (my lovely wife)... well lovely! But then the dreaded oil price squeeze came and I was let go from my contract.

I’ve been looking for work for 6 months now , and while I know people in the industry that have been out of work for 9 months and in one case 16 months, my 6 month unemployment has been a journey of discovery, its led me to ask lot of pertinent questions, and some of those questions I don’t have answers to. I’ve had to do and try things I would ordinarily not have looked at or done, for example looking into this platform, I would never have found it if I was still driving 500 miles a week to work, so in some regards you could say losing my job led me here but that would be all too simple.

So back to the question ... Who am I? My name is Aj but everyone calls me Ai (long story), I’m just a regular guy, husband, father of two , 43 years old, oil worker. My boys are 9 and 11 (its my older sons birthday today). I’ve been married for 13 years and I can honestly say I wish I’d done it sooner... but we’ll talk about that in a future post. Outside of work I suppose my main interests are family, watches, music and working out.

I know I still haven’t answered the question WHO AM I ... the truth is I don’t know, So much of 'who I am' was 'what I did' and now I guess with time on my hands to think about the question I haven't had time to think of an answer.
On twitter I describe myself as unemployed oil man, part-time re-seller and recovering Sinner.... and that’s about the most accurate I can be for now.

Till the next post.!

Best Regards
Ai