As some of you may know, I am due to become a father for the second time in October. This impending addition has made me think about the impact I have had on the world.

There are the obvious costs to the planet for sustaining my life. Whether that is CO₂ released into the atmosphere, the waste I create, or the environmental toll caused by the production of my food.

There are also some positives… somewhere. Hopefully I have made some people happy (one married me, so can’t be too bad), but I know I have probably made some people sad. Beyond environmental or emotional, it is actions that we are judged on, so what have I added to humanity in my 30-odd years?

All this has led to me thinking about death a lot recently. Well, actually, I have been thinking about legacy.

Something for the future

I have lots of ideas about how I can improve the world. Most are probably a load of rubbish, but there may be some good ones in there. I’ve been slowly brewing some ideas about how I would change education, but I realised that if I were wiped out tomorrow (see right) then all that would be lost. And well, some people may be sad, but would humanity miss out on something good?

So, I am going to start to jot down some of my musings. Hopefully the act of putting them down on paper/webpage, and how people react to them, will help me tie them all together in a cohesive package that I have yet to achieve in my mind alone.

However, before I begin writing down my ideas, I feel it is only fair to lay out my biography so you can see where these ideas came from. So, over the next few posts, I will start to lay out the key moments in my life that helped shape me and my thinking.