06/09/2026
Next month, I’ll be 49.
Which feels mildly offensive because I still don’t think of myself as somebody who is nearly 50 😂
But it has made me think about how much I’ve changed.
I used to be the social one. Always out, always around people, always involved.
Now I’m much happier with a journal, a book, a café, writing, research, planning a trip or disappearing down a rabbit hole because something has caught my attention.
Parenting changed me.
Divorce changed me.
Remarriage changed me again.
And years ago, after a su***de attempt, I came away with one thought that stayed with me:
I didn’t die.
I was still here.
And in my head, that felt like another chance to actually live my life and do the things I’d always been too scared to do.
That is how I ended up doing stand-up comedy.
I was terrified of it, but I thought, I nearly wasn’t here at all. Am I really going to let fear stop me doing something I’ve always wanted to try?
So I did it.
I didn’t become fearless.
But fear stopped getting the final vote.
Since then I’ve changed careers, travelled, built businesses, studied things that fascinated me, written a novel and published it.
And now I’m writing another.
My work has changed too.
I spent years being the useful one. The organiser. The fixer. The person behind the scenes.
Now I care much more about ideas, patterns, decisions, structure and understanding why something isn’t working in the first place.
I think that’s part of why I’ve been thinking about how I want to be perceived now.
Not just as helpful.
Not just as someone who can sort things out.
But as someone with judgement, perspective, ideas and something worth saying.
I know I can’t just give myself a title and expect people to see me differently.
I have to show it.
And maybe that is what getting older is giving me more of.
Less interest in proving myself.
More interest in actually living.
There was a point in my life when I genuinely didn’t think I had a future.
Now I’m planning trips years ahead, writing books, building work I care about and wondering what else I haven’t done yet.
There was so much of my life I hadn’t met yet… there still is.