Dear Family and Friends,
I love to write. A lot. I have not written in a while. I am starting to write again. A few weeks ago, I woke up in the middle of the night (seriously) with a yearning to start writing again.
*****
A bit of history: I started writing letters to my family almost 30 years ago. Writing was the best way for me to express myself to Theresa, Heather and Dylan. I was traveling a lot for work, and sometimes the best I could do was to open my laptop and collect my thoughts at 35,000 feet.
One day I passed Heather’s room, her desk drawer was open, and I saw that she had collected my letters. Those letters were the inspiration for a book (the blockbuster, “Can Openers”, and the smash hit follow-up “Letter Openers”, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and now being sold by others on EBay. Seriously).
I spent a few years maintaining a blog (halwardblog.com), and posting the content of that blog on social media (Facebook, Twitter, etc.). I did that to connect with others, but social media started to change, internet strangers started to threaten me, I had no appetite for trolls, so I stopped my social media activity about five years ago.
*****
It is time for me to start writing again. I have the time, and I have connections with all of you that I want to maintain. A few notes about the who, what, where, when, how and why:
Who: note that you are receiving this as part of a “BCC” list. I am doing that to maintain your anonymity. Know that you are either part of my family, you are a friend, someone I care deeply about, someone I know professionally, or all of the above. If you don’t want to receive this, let me know and I’ll remove you from this list.
A few promises: I will not share your information with anyone. I will not advertise anything here. I will not try to sell you anything (If you want copies of my books, please message me and I will ship copies of them to you for free). I will do my best to stay away from the most divisive topics of the day. I don’t mean to offend….although sometimes I do mean to provoke.
Why I am writing: I don’t know how to maintain face to face connections with 50-100 people at the same time. I see some of you at breakfast on Saturday morning, I speak to some of you by telephone, some by email, and I see some of you when my favourite band comes to town. But some of you I don’t see you face to face very often. Yet I think of all of you often. So I am going to try this as a way to stay connected with all of you.
How: I have created multiple mailing lists. All of you are on a larger “Family and Friends” list, and some of you are on other sublists (I have created a Recovery list for the Saturday Breakfast Bunch. You know who you are. Although you are all invited to breakfast on Saturday mornings, if you can make it to Nudys in West Chester….).
When and Where: I am aiming to do this 1-2x a month, by email.
What: This will be a collection of whatever we would discuss by telephone, or at breakfast. That may include brief life updates, travel, culture, entertainment, sports. And recovery too.
So with that in mind, a few random thoughts this week:
Theresa retired a few weeks ago. The last 30 years she worked at Vanguard (25 years) and Infosys (5 years) in several roles (both defined benefits [pensions] and defined contributions [401ks]). She served her colleagues and her companies well. I had the privilege of reading some of the feedback her colleagues shared with her. They valued her compassion for them, her kindness and her leadership.
I am the beneficiary of Theresa’s financial wisdom. Everything I know about saving money (live frugally, spend less than we make, save the difference) I learned from her. Much of what I know about investing (Jack Bogle, index funds, 401ks/IRAs/529s) I learned from her. More about this topic in future weeks….
My work is slowing down. I support early phase clinical trial pharmacovigilance (drug safety). The funding for those early phase clinical trials has slowed, in large part because of regulatory uncertainty in Washington DC. So I am working 25-30 hours/week. I don’t need the money, but I do need the mental stimulation and the opportunity to solve problems that works allows.
What are we going to do next? Probably the topic of an essay sometime soon….
The last book I read: “Enshittification”, by Cory Doctorow. A fascinating read that describes Big Tech in 2025. This includes Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook, X, Microsoft, and others. Doctorow follows these companies from founding to today, and explains how each one takes advantage of customers, creators, and regulators. Each has created a service/technology that is very difficult to quit, by design. (I quit social media a few years ago, and it wasn’t easy). The first half of the book describes the problem, and the second half outlines potential solutions.
I will reach out to you soon with some essays…..
With Love,
Hal
