September 11

I meant to write this yesterday but was lacking motivation for various reasons.

Yesterday of course was September 11 and six years after the World Trade Center tragedy. It is interesting to me that six years later I am in roughly the same place I was when this happened. In fact as with most people I am sure, I think how lucky my wife and I were during that time. Six years of course is not a significant milestone or anniversary though, but another point in our life when changes are about to occur.

You see on September 10th 2001, we were in the US, Chicago to be exact and getting on a plane to fly over to the UK to see my parents and so I could have some meetings with one of my clients. Initially our plans in the US whilst on holidays visiting my Sister and her family was to fly directly out of Boston’s Logan airport to the UK on September 11. I can’t say for sure if we would have been on any of the flights that actually flew into the World Trade Center, and of course the fact that we decided to go to Chicago three days earlier removes that entirely out of the equation, but sometimes you just think ‘how close we were’. I am sure that a lot of people have similar thoughts about that day.

I am sure that the vast amount of the population of this world also remembers that day.

I remember vividly watching the whole events unfold live on TV in my parents house in Pimlico, London only a few hours after actually landing at Heathrow from Chicago. I also remember saying to my family at the time that this is going to change the world as we know it. It was an obvious statement, but looking back now on the last six years, there is absolutely no doubt that it was spot on. This world has significantly changed, and I for one am not sure if it has changed for the better. Being in the UK after it happened for the next seven days was a very strange feeling. It seemed like the entire country was in a slump.

So much has changed since then in our own lives. We had our beautiful daughter, I shut down my business and we moved to the UK. I started work with one of my previous clients full-time. We purchased our first house and had our next addition to the family, our precious son.

Now six years later things are about to change for our own little part of this world, significantly. Hopefully to make things better for us in our life in the UK.

The original motivation for the upheaval that we went through was to make our life a lot simpler. Essentially to make a new start in a new country. There were our own causalities of the change, we left behind my wife’s side of the family as well as a lot of great friends. Life hasn’t been spectacular over here. It initially started simple, but inevitably became more complex over time. It is still more complex than I would like and the changes we are about to press forward with are designed to try and make it simpler once again. Don’t get me wrong, I certainly don’t regret moving over here. We have seen a lot of things here that we would have never seen still being in Australia. We have been to Paris twice, Ireland, Venice and plan on a lot more travel.

One of the other reasons we decided to up sticks and move to the UK was because running my own business and working with the clients I had at the time meant I was not getting to see much of my family. Now here in the UK, I am actually seeing less of them due to travelling every week and being away from home on average two to three nights per week. This was definitely not part of the plan and it needs to change. I miss my family when I am away and want to get back to the position I was in originally when we arrived. I know some people like travelling, and at one point in my life I loved it also, but not any more. Not unless my family travels with me.

Anyhow, I am nervously looking forward to the next six years, but firmly believe we are making the right decisions in our life.

Updates to follow… at some point.

Travis