Ten years ago, after a characteristically impulsive decision to blow up my life (again), I began writing on the internet because several colleagues wanted continued updates and, fundamentally, I had never once in my life said no to an audience.

To my surprise, I became instantly obsessed. Writing was intoxicating. I loved crafting humorous passages, sharing thoughts, and honestly, for the first time since winning the Year 8 German prize, I discovered I might actually be good at something.

Something that didn’t involve standing still in my underwear.

You see, I’d spent the previous ten years turning my brain to mulch, fit modelling, where the primary intellectual challenge had been remembering to zip my flies before emerging from behind a stained curtain.

Finding out I could write was kinda like realising I’d been Elle Woods all along.

The blog flourished briefly before I vanished from the digital landscape. I resurfaced again in 2020 and then, predictably, disappeared once more.

(Pattern developing? Yes.)

The problem was I just didn’t see myself as a creative. I liked spreadsheets and numbers. I’ve got a business science degree. I wasn’t one of those tortoiseshell glasses people who owns seventeen notebooks and “accidentally” writes poetry in cafes.

But, the universe kept nudging me to go back to writing.

Then shoving me.

Then downright rugby-tackling me to the ground.

Finally, when I still didn’t listen, the universe sent a man.

Of course.

A really impressive one at that.

So remarkably accomplished in fact, it shook me to my core. He had actual real-life achievements, like sailing around the world SINGLE-handedly. While I had… well… potential.

Potential which I had not yet gotten around to demonstrating to anyone, including myself.

When he asked me what I was doing with my life and wanted to achieve, I drew a bit of a blank. Truth was I was still recovering from turning forty. I’d spent most of 2024 celebrating almost continuously in a desperate attempt to distract myself from the actual fact of my fortyness.

I dug around in my skull and found a suitably impressive answer “I’m working on a book actually.”

It was a lie.

I’d always had the idea of turning the original blog into a book but I’d made no effort since 2020 when I finally uploaded the final installment of that adventure.

The morning after our first date on 10th September 2024, fuelled by panic, pride, and the looming threat of a second date with someone disturbingly competent, I started writing.

And I didn’t stop.

I still haven’t.

I’ve written everyday for the past twenty months. Most of those for upward of ten hours a day.

It’s a full-time obsession. Its’s all I do.

All being well I will self-publish my first book later this year.

It will be the proudest moment of my life.

So.

Here we are again.

Me writing.

You reading.

Both of us apparently still committed to seeing what happens next.

P.S I am no longer in contact with said man.

Shame really.

He missed out on a really good dedication.