insuriosity

I am an insurance claims professional based in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia.  I have held various roles in my career, with 20 years as an independent adjuster with several national firms, 6 years in emergency and disaster restoration as an account manager, and now working as a claims advocate with a national Canadian-owned insurance brokerage.  I have lived in three provinces, worked in some capacity in most jurisdictions in Canada, and am lucky to have had such a varied career. Like anyone, I have a wide variety of interests, and I wanted a place to think and write about them.

I had assembled a pair of blogs over the years – one main one about fitness, and one barely started about my thoughts from my professional life. I started these blogs to be able to post my thoughts on a wide range of topics and I wanted more room than Twitter allows.  While the posts were intermittent since those blogs started (including a huge gap of several years!), I’m rebooting all of it, and will post more frequently and over a broader range of topics – or at least that’s my goal.

The topics I will cover here will include fitness, insurance, technology, management and leadership, productivity, motorcycling, photography, and frankly whatever else strikes my fancy. Don’t be surprised if the topics start to bleed together.

Blogging about your professional life is always a tightrope walk – the age old balance between an on-line life and a professional life. That said, I honestly don’t know how widely read this will be (although I will be checking the site statistics pretty regularly, so I really do know how widely read this will be). I will be expressing my opinion, and I will be clear that the thoughts on these pages are my own, and don’t reflect the opinions of my employers, past or current.

My professional interests include emerging insurance trends, management and leadership, productivity, technology, and perhaps other shiny things that catch my attention.  I try to keep updated on the latest new and legislation affecting insurers, brokers, adjusters, and the industry as a whole.  One of the really interesting things to be coming forward is the intersection of insurance and technology, and I will have significant opinions about that; watch this space for articles on Artificial Intelligence (AI), drones, Insuretech, and other advancements that will help our industry.

The old content is still there (as much as there was).  You can hunt around for it under the menu, and please bear with me as I’m still developing the site a bit. If you are curious as to what I was writing and thinking 5 to 10 years ago, you can dig around; I’ll take credit for the Canadian insurers taking my advice to sell flood insurance when I gave it to them back in ’11. 

As I mentioned, I also blogged about running, fitness and a healthy lifestyle for several years. I lost a lot of weight after participating in a “Biggest Loser”-style challenge with a few of my colleagues, losing 95 pounds in one year, and maintained a healthy weight for several years.  Personal challenges changed things for a while, and then I stopped running, and stopped blogging. I once again became out of shape and heavyset. I have undertaken several attempts to restart my running, but none off them stuck – until now, it seems.

Starting in January 2020 (10 years later…), I got back into running, and decided to restart the blog as well. You can find my blog posts and updates about fitness above, and I’m starting to post new content there. You can see my latest runs on the right, and find the links to follow me on my Strava or Garmin Connect account.

One of the things I have always been curious about is the intersection of fitness and technology. A nascent industry when I was first looking into this, the technology has positively blossomed to the point where my current watch has more power than my old Palmpilot and my first Blackberry smartphone combined – far more.

All of my old posts have been migrated over. I haven’t gone back much, and I kind of encourage you not to either, given that my thinking might have changed so much, but it’s there if you want to. If you’re interested in the Big Man Big Loser story, those posts are there too. 

Other hobbies – photography and motorcycling – will have posts over time, likely less regular than the other two. Stay tuned and follow those links too. If you want to connect with me over the various social networks I’m on, the easiest way is to slide your mouse to the right to find the links.

Most of the photos are linked via the web – something that (I believe) is still free of copyright infringement in Canada. I reserve the copyright for the use of my own photographs, and will be putting more and more of those up over time. You may just have to ask if they are mine or not.

So, things will be getting fitter (both me and fixing errors on the blog), faster (running I hope, but also my motorcycle rides), and perhaps a little bit funnier (that hasn’t proven to be the case yet). Find your way to stuff in the menu, and be sure to follow me on any of a number of social media outlets – although, be warned, I repeatedly have thoughts of joining Stephen King, and committing Facebookicide. Comments are welcomed, and thanks for stopping by.

*The opinions expressed here on the Insuriosity Blog are mine alone, and in no way reflect the opinion of my employer or any of my co-workers. I am posting of my own volition without express permission of my employer; This may be some trouble for me.