Who Is Richard Banfield?

I stepped away from the traditional work world after my wife died.

My name is Richard. In the past five years my life has been completely transformed by tragedy and unexpected events.

But something magical has come of all this heartache.

On paper, I am just another 56-year-old. If you were to meet me, you may not guess that I lost my wife to cancer, lost my business, and nearly lost my dad to a heart attack all within months of each other.

You wouldn’t know that before all that I have also been divorced because I was a workaholic consumed by needing more.

You wouldn’t know that I lived on a small island in the Indian Ocean for a year teaching scuba diving. Or that I slept inside volcano crater on that same island.

You may not know that I’ve worked dozens of different jobs, what’s now fashionably called a non-linear career.

Here’s what you should know.

I’ve never had a plan for life but I’ve always wanted to do creative stuff with interesting people. I have done just that.

Like most of us, I was impatient for success so I changed direction a lot. I think I was hoping for faster results. Over time I realized that if I didn’t commit to something I’d miss out on the kind of growth that comes from going deeper.

So I started a design business with the commitment to do it for at least ten years. It lasted fifteen. We did amazing work. Mostly because we were good at finding interesting people to work with.

I loved everything about that work but I didn’t like how it turned me into a workaholic. My first marriage ended in part because I was working too much. We both worked too much. We worked on everything except our relationship. Our kids are amazing in spite of my mistakes, so something good came of that.

When I got remarried I swore I’d be better at being present and I’d be healthier. Kristy was eleven years younger than me so I’d need to make sure I’d be able to be around when it mattered. I couldn’t have ever imagined that my beautiful young wife would die before me.

When Kristy got her cancer diagnosis, our son was still nursing. Ironically, the news made me want to work hard again. It’s what I knew. Work was safe. It made me feel like I was contributing something valuable to this awful situation.

After her death, I stepped out of the traditional working world and have been creating something that I don’t what to run away from.

With that goal in mind, I write about what it’s like to be a middle aged person who has decided to make the second half of his life the best half.

I’m experiencing a profound time of self examination. I run experiments on myself to learn how to remain at peace and stay happy.

If I discover something interesting in these experiments, I write my findings down and share them. If I think the results are useful to others, I will suggest practical ways to implement my learnings.

These experiments always start with the stories we have in our heads. You know, the stories that keep you small, block your growth, and sabotage your best laid plans. I call these stories domestic propaganda (hence the name of this account) because they are often our brains way of keeping us compliant. I write about the ways that you can become aware of your internal stories and then change them to work with you, not against you.

Thank you for joining me on this journey and reading my writing. It’s a privilege to be amongst so many brilliant and inspiring people.

‍