An entirely unnecessary explanation of why I've decided to start a blog.
Yes, a fucking blog. In 2026.
Apparently, after spending years avoiding social media and its endless parade of carefully curated bullshit, I’ve decided the internet needs yet another middle-aged man with opinions.
The irony isn’t lost on me.
The internet doesn’t need another blog. It certainly doesn’t need another self-appointed intellectual dishing out unsolicited wisdom about life, success, or the seven habits of highly effective wankers.
And yet, here we are.
Welcome, I suppose.
Forty-five. Still winging it.
When I was 25, I didn’t spend much time thinking about what life would look like at 45. I was too busy being 25, which, as I recall, involved a fair amount of questionable decision-making.
But I probably assumed I’d have the usual things sorted by now.
Marriage. Career. House. Car. Investments. A respectable collection of friends. Perhaps enough travel to qualify as vaguely worldly.
You know, the standard checklist for a functioning adult.
Twenty years later, I’ve ticked a few boxes.
I’m married to a woman who understands me better than I sometimes understand myself. I have a career I enjoy, a comfortable enough life, and some idea of where I’d like to end up.
Would I have liked to invest earlier? Fuck yes.
Would I have liked to avoid a few spectacularly stupid decisions? Naturally.
But I’ve also realised that being 45 doesn’t come with some magical upgrade in wisdom. There’s no ceremony where somebody hands you a certificate declaring you a fully functioning adult.
You just get older, develop stronger opinions about things that probably don’t matter, and become increasingly intolerant of bullshit.
At least that’s been my experience.
I’ve largely abandoned social media. Not because I’ve achieved some enlightened state of digital minimalism, but because I got tired of watching people compete in what has essentially become a vanity gallery.
Look at my holiday. Look at my car. Look at my perfect marriage. Look at this inspirational quote I found five minutes ago that now apparently represents my entire philosophy of life.
Good for you, mate.
I’ve also become more selective about the people I keep around. My circle is smaller these days, and I’m perfectly happy with that.
Quality over quantity.
Unless we’re talking about money. Then by all means, give me the fucking quantity.
Jack of all trades. Master of fuck all.
I’ve always been curious.
About people. Technology. Advertising. Cars. Politics. Religion. Why things work. Why people behave the way they do. Why seemingly intelligent people make spectacularly stupid decisions.
I’ll read something, follow a thought, connect it to something else, and disappear down a rabbit hole that has absolutely nothing to do with whatever I was supposed to be doing.
Three hours later, I’ve learnt something fascinating, forgotten why I started, and accomplished precisely fuck all on my original to-do list.
It’s a gift. And occasionally a pain in the arse.
I’m reasonably good at creative thinking, problem-solving, and connecting dots that don’t always appear to belong on the same page.
But I’m also very good at generating seventeen ideas and failing to properly finish the first one.
I’ve learnt a lot about how my mind works over the years. Some of it has been reassuring. Some of it has explained frustrations I’ve carried for much longer than I’d care to admit.
But here’s the thing.
I don’t have formal qualifications in most of the subjects I find interesting.
I haven’t spent years collecting prestigious titles or certificates declaring me an authority on whatever happens to occupy my brain that week.
I’ve just read things, experienced things, asked questions, and occasionally managed to put two and two together without arriving at seven.
Which brings me to the name of this blog.
Confidently Unqualified.
It’s not that I believe qualifications are meaningless. Quite the opposite.
I like my surgeons qualified. My pilots too. Preferably the people responsible for designing bridges.
But I’ve never understood why some people believe a title automatically makes their opinion more valuable than someone else’s.
I’ve met very qualified people capable of producing truly impressive quantities of bullshit.
I’ve also met people without a single impressive credential who could explain complicated things with remarkable clarity.
The difference, I’ve found, is rarely how confidently someone speaks.
It’s whether what they’re saying actually makes sense.
And if you need 50 slides of intellectual gymnastics to explain a simple idea, perhaps the idea wasn’t that clever to begin with.
Just a thought.
An unqualified one, naturally.
I reserve the right to be wrong.
I have opinions. Lots of them.
Some are well-informed. Some are based on personal experience. Others are the unfortunate consequence of having access to the internet and too much curiosity.
And some, I suspect, are complete bollocks.
I’m fine with that.
I’ve never understood people who treat changing their minds as some sort of humiliating defeat.
If you can explain something to me, show me an angle I haven’t considered, or make a compelling argument, I’ll listen.
I might disagree. I might argue. I might ask seventeen increasingly annoying questions.
But if your reasoning holds up, I’ll change my mind.
It’s happened before.
What I won’t do is accept something purely because that’s how it’s always been done, because someone important said so, or because questioning it might make the room uncomfortable.
Fuck that.
The world has enough people nodding politely at things they don’t understand.
I don’t need to become another one.
Of course, there’s always the possibility that I’m the idiot in the room.
Which, statistically speaking, must happen occasionally.
I’d just rather find out than spend the rest of my life confidently defending nonsense.
A vanity project. Obviously.
I don’t have children.
My wife and I are quite happy with that decision. We like our life, enjoy our freedom, and have never felt particularly compelled to reorganise the entire operation around a small human being.
But getting older does make you think about what you leave behind.
Not necessarily in some grand, philosophical, standing-on-a-mountain-watching-the-sunset sort of way.
More in the sense of wondering whether anything of you will remain when you’re no longer around to annoy people personally.
Some leave businesses. Some leave fortunes. Some leave children who inherit their best qualities, their worst habits, and occasionally their questionable taste in music.
I suppose I’m leaving words.
Thoughts, opinions, experiences, half-baked theories, and the occasional spectacularly ill-informed conclusion.
A little digital evidence that Shukri Jamal existed and had things to say.
It’s probably narcissistic.
In fact, it’s almost certainly narcissistic.
Which is especially rich coming from someone who abandoned social media because he couldn’t stand the endless self-promotion.
Apparently, my solution to the world’s vanity problem was to create a website entirely about myself.
Brilliant.
At least here, nobody has to pretend to care.
For what it’s worth.
I don’t think you need to have everything figured out to have lived a worthwhile life.
You can be flawed. Make mistakes. Take the scenic route to figuring things out. Be good at some things and spectacularly shit at others.
You can have a million ideas and finish only a fraction of them.
You can change your mind.
You can be wrong.
And despite all that, you can still find happiness.
I’m not saying I’ve mastered any of this. Far from it.
There are things I’d do differently if given another chance. People I’d have avoided. Money I’d have invested. Decisions I’d reconsider.
But there are also things I wouldn’t trade for anything.
The woman I married. The life we’ve built. The people who stuck around when things weren’t particularly pleasant.
And the rather liberating realisation that I no longer need everyone to like me, agree with me, or approve of the way I choose to live.
Maybe something I write here will make someone think. Maybe it’ll start an interesting argument. Maybe somebody will explain why I’m completely full of shit.
Good.
That’s how we learn.
And maybe nobody will read any of it.
That’s fine too.
I don’t need to change the world. I’d be quite satisfied knowing I contributed something useful, however small, while I was here.
Because a purposeful life doesn’t necessarily have to be an extraordinary one.
Sometimes it’s enough to have loved the right people, questioned the wrong things, made a few decent decisions, survived the stupid ones, and found a little happiness along the way.
So this is my little contribution to the great, overcrowded, occasionally magnificent mess that is the internet.
A collection of thoughts from a man who knows a little about a lot, a lot about very little, and is still figuring out the difference.
For the record, I was here.
And I had opinions.
Unfortunately.