If I had to compare myself to an animal, I’d probably say a crow.

Not because it’s the most glamorous creature in the animal kingdom, but because it’s misunderstood, curious, and quietly intelligent. Crows watch the world carefully. They’re observers first, participants second—and that’s always been very much my way of moving through life.

I spend a lot of time watching the world: people, nature, the small details others sometimes overlook. That’s where most of my poetry and photography comes from—standing back, noticing the odd, the beautiful, or the painful parts of life and trying to make sense of them through words or images. 

Writing started as a way for me to process my thoughts and emotions, especially living with dyslexia, being on the autism spectrum, and dealing with PTSD. Over time it simply became part of how I exist in the world. 

Crows are also resilient creatures. They survive in almost any environment, adapting to whatever life throws at them. That resonates with me too. Life has a habit of delivering its fair share of curveballs, but you learn to keep going, to adapt, and maybe even find a bit of wisdom in the process. As I’ve written before, life is fragile and unpredictable, and those experiences shape how you see the world. 

There’s another thing about crows I quite like: they’re curious. They investigate everything. That curiosity is probably why I’ve spent years reading different religious texts and exploring different beliefs—to understand people and the world a little better. 

So yes, if I had to pick an animal, it would be the crow.

Quietly watching.
Always curious.
Picking up little shiny thoughts from the ground and turning them into poems.
Stay safe.

Bc

Dear Future Bob

If you’re reading this, then congratulations old boy — you somehow managed to make it to a century. That’s either impressive stubbornness, a cosmic clerical error, or Mrs Bob has simply kept you alive through sheer force of will. My money is on the last one.

Right then… how did we do?

Did we keep our promise to try and be a decent man? Not perfect — that was never the goal — but decent. The sort of bloke who tries to help where he can, even if he occasionally makes a complete hash of things along the way. Because if there’s one thing life has taught us, it’s that mistakes are part of the deal. The important bit is the intention behind the effort. 

By now you’ll have seen a lot of people come and go. That’s the nature of the thing. Life is fragile — far more fragile than most of us realise when we’re younger. We spend years thinking we’ve got endless tomorrows in the bank, until eventually we realise the account was never that full to begin with. 

So tell me — did you remember that?

Did you remember to enjoy the quiet moments?

The cup of coffee in the morning.
A good book from the top of the ever-growing pile.
The sound of laughter in the house.
The strange little magic that lives in ordinary days.

Those are the bits that matter. Not the noise.

I hope you kept writing the scribbles. You never really wanted to be a poet anyway — you just wanted to be okay, somewhere along the line those scribbles became a way of stitching the mind back together, one line at a time. 

Did the words help other people too?

I hope so.

Because if the scribbles managed to make someone feel a little less alone in the dark corners of their mind, then that’s a job well done.

Also, I hope you kept your curiosity. Kept reading strange books. Kept exploring different beliefs and ideas. Kept looking for the bits of truth hidden in places people are too busy arguing about to notice. The universe is a very big place, and we only ever get to peek at a tiny fraction of it.

Did you keep watching the moon through a camera lens?

Did you still tinker in the shed like Grandad used to?

Speaking of him… I hope you never forgot the lessons he gave you. Work hard. Be honest. Help people if you can. And above all, try to be the sort of man who leaves things slightly better than he found them. 

If you managed that — even a little — then I reckon we did alright.

And one last thing…

If Mrs Bob is still beside you at a hundred years old, then you won the lottery of life, my friend. That smile of hers was always a kind of magic, and you were lucky enough to fall under the spell. Never forget that.

Right then.

I’ll let you get back to whatever a 100-year-old poet does with his day. Probably complaining about traffic, knowing you.

Take care of yourself old man.

Stay safe.

Bc

I’d go on a massive shopping spree at Forbidden Planet.

It’s got everything from comic books to collectibles and much more.

Bc

My middle name is Walter. Not because of some long family tradition — just one man.

Walter was my maternal grandfather, and he stepped into my life when I was a boy and needed a male role model.

Grandad was a retired firefighter and one of those people who could seemingly do anything — paint signs, grow a garden, fix whatever was broken. But the real lessons he gave me weren’t about skills. They were about character.

He taught me to polish my shoes and make an effort when I went out — not because appearances are everything, but because it shows respect for the world around you.
He taught me to help people without worrying about who they are or where they come from.
And he taught me that a man’s word should mean something.

I haven’t always lived up to his standard — life has a way of tripping you up — but carrying his name reminds me of the person I should try to be.

That’s why I write as Bob W Christian. The “W” is for Walter. It’s a quiet nod to the man who helped shape me.

So no, Walter isn’t a flashy middle name. But to me it represents a good man, a proper gentleman, and someone I still try to make proud.

And that’s reason enough to keep it.

Stay safe,
BC

The last thing I learned…

Funny thing about learning.
It rarely arrives with a drum roll or flashing neon sign saying “Congratulations, you have levelled up.”

More often than not, it sneaks up on you quietly while you’re doing something ordinary.

The other day I was tinkering with something in the shed (one of those little rabbit holes we all disappear into from time to time), and I realised something rather simple…

You don’t actually need to know everything to move forward.
You just need to know one more thing than you did yesterday.

That might sound obvious, but it’s surprisingly easy to forget.

We spend so much time worrying about the big picture — mastering the whole skill, understanding the entire system, having all the answers neatly lined up like books on a shelf — that we overlook the tiny steps that actually get us there.

Learning, as it turns out, is less like climbing a ladder and more like wandering through fog with a torch.

You can’t see the whole path.
You can only see the next few steps.

But if you keep walking, the path keeps appearing.

So the last thing I learned?

Progress doesn’t come from knowing everything.

It comes from being curious enough to learn the next small thing…
and then the next.

Stay safe.

Bc

It’s not actually a question.
It’s the moment someone says to me:
“Oh! But you don’t look autistic.”

I know people usually mean it as a compliment. They think they’re saying I seem capable, social, or “normal.” But what it really reveals is a stereotype — the assumption that autism has a specific look.

Autism isn’t a costume. It isn’t a facial expression. It isn’t something you can spot from a quick glance across a room.

It’s a neurological difference that shapes how I experience the world — how I process sound, communication, social cues, routine, and emotion. And like many autistic people, I’ve learned to mask some of those differences so I can navigate environments that weren’t designed with people like me in mind.

Sometimes it feels like my diagnosis is being quietly erased.

So when someone says, “You don’t look autistic,” what they’re really saying is:
“You don’t match the picture of autism I had in my head.”

The truth is, autistic people look like everyone else.
The stereotype was the problem — not me.

Early in my career, I worked on an engineering (R&D) project that completely failed. We had the wrong assumptions, rushed decisions, and in the end the result simply didn’t work, at the time it felt like a setback, even embarrassing. But that failure forced me to slow down, reflect, and question how I approached problems. It taught me patience, humility, and the importance of building strong foundations rather than chasing quick wins.

Looking back, that experience shaped my character more than any easy success could have. In a small way, it reminds me of a Buddhist idea: setbacks are not obstacles to the path—they are part of the path. Failure creates space for awareness and growth. Each mistake becomes a quiet teacher.

Because of that experience, I now approach challenges more thoughtfully and resiliently. What once looked like failure became the foundation for better decisions, stronger habits, and ultimately better outcomes.

Sometimes the step that feels like falling backward is actually the one that steadies your footing for the climb ahead.

My story begins with a simple truth: I never saw any of this coming.

Growing up, I never imagined I’d become an R&D engineer, a photographer, or—least of all—a poet.

There are a few objects that quietly anchor my days, the small things that make life feel stitched together. My phone is the first—less a gadget and more a pocket‑sized notebook where half‑formed poems land before they drift away. Then there are my comic books, those bright-paper portals that let me step out of the world for a while and into somewhere louder, stranger, and wonderfully unreal. And finally, the constants: my wife and my cat. They’re not objects, of course, but they’re the companions who turn the ordinary into something worth coming home to.

The experiences that helped me grow the most were the ones that came closest to undoing me. The easy chapters never asked much of me, but the hard ones stripped life down to its bare truth, the way a brief moment of stillness can clear the mind just enough to see what’s real. In the middle of loss, upheaval, and the quiet fear that I might not make it through, I learned what I was clinging to and what I needed to release. Those moments revealed strength I didn’t know I had and tenderness I didn’t know I was allowed to keep. In a way that echoes a small thread of Buddhist thought, the suffering wasn’t a punishment but a teacher — not gentle, but precise. The things that tried to destroy me became the very forces that shaped me into someone steadier, clearer, and more awake to my own life.