I’m Tim, Eden’s dad. Michelle and I both care for him full-time, and I feel lucky there’s two of us.
I spent most of my working life in IT. I’ve had a lot of titles over the years, from information architect in Sydney, working for banks and a global travel company, to IT manager at one of the large RSL clubs here on the Coast. I loved the people there. But IT is the kind of work where you’re always on call, and eighteen-hour days were normal. It nearly killed me.
Most people on the Coast commute to Sydney for the big jobs, and around 2009, in the middle of the GFC, I applied for 367 of them. I got two interviews, and both asked why I was applying when I was so overqualified. I didn’t get either. But even if I had, the truth is that with Eden at home and my health the way it is, two-plus hours on a train and eighteen-hour days would’ve had me back in hospital within months. It came down to having a living or having a life. So Michelle and I chose the life, and made our own work. I started Designit4u in 2011, and fifteen-odd years of websites and code later, I built this one too.
In the last couple of years, a lot of web and graphic design work has simply disappeared, and it’s hit our business hard. So I’ve done what I’ve always done: learned the next thing. These days I’m studying AI and building automation for businesses, which, in a funny way, takes me right back to where I started in IT.
Around the same time we started Designit4u, we started a lifestyle magazine on the Central Coast and ran it for about eleven years. It was deep-end learning in business and in photography: food, fashion, architecture, travel. I’ve shot just about every kind of job since through Tim Brand Photography, and since 2020 I’ve put my real passion into film.
I’ve played guitar since I was nine, fifty years and self-taught, and I wrote this channel’s theme song, Hidden Histories, for Eden.
I’ve also lived with Crohn’s disease most of my life. It’s nearly killed me a couple of times, so I know what it’s like to need care as well as give it.
And raising Eden has made me notice things in myself I’d spent decades not seeing. I’ve never been diagnosed, but I’m fairly sure I’ve got a good dose of ADHD and autism too. So this is partly his story, and partly me working out mine.
If you’ve never lived with autism, you’re exactly who this is for.