It’s not over yet. I’m still here, still creaking around the place, still making the odd fresh mistake and trying to fix a few old ones. But it feels like the right time to say where I’ve landed so far.

As I get older and slightly more rounded around the edges, I’ve started looking back on parts of my life with growing regret.

Not the small, passing kind, either. The sort that sits beside you in the quiet moments and clears its throat every now and then. I’m not entirely sure what to do with that yet.

I’m all but 63 now and starting to creak a bit. The warranty has definitely expired. Somewhere along the way it finally sank in that this whole thing is finite. Life isn’t an open-ended series. It’s a limited run.

That realisation doesn’t turn up as one big dramatic moment. It comes in pieces:

The moment you catch yourself grunting when you stand up.
The realisation your kids are now older than you were in some of your strongest memories.
The knowledge that there are fewer big reinventions left, and not every mistake can be walked off.

It’s not a comfortable thought, but it does change the way you see things.

You start to understand that time is a currency you don’t get a second issue of. That makes you look back and forward differently. Looking back, you see the choices you’d make another way if you had your time again. Looking forward, you become a bit more selective about what you spend the remaining years on.

The regret is real. There are relationships I mishandled, opportunities I ignored, times I chose the easier wrong over the harder right. I can’t go back and edit those chapters. They’re printed now. All I can do is acknowledge them, try not to repeat them, and hope I did enough good around the edges to balance things out a bit.

On the other side of that, there’s something else: a growing sense that, for all the missteps, this has been an unforgettable adventure.

I’ve stood in places I never expected to see, worked in communities I didn’t even know existed when I was a kid on a fruit block, walked into rooms wildly above my pay grade, and occasionally stumbled my way through in one piece. I’ve been broke, comfortable, useful, useless, burnt out, energised, lonely, and surrounded. It hasn’t been dull.

When you finally accept that there is a final chapter somewhere up ahead, it doesn’t just make you gloomy. If you let it, it can sharpen things.

Petty arguments and minor irritations lose some of their bite. You realise you don’t have to attend every drama you’re invited to. The list of people whose opinions actually matter gets shorter. You start to pay more attention to ordinary days that go quietly well – a decent conversation, a drive with good music, a job done properly with people you like.

Birthdays change shape too. They stop being a contest about who can pretend to be youngest for longest and become something else: markers. Not of “success” in the glossy sense, but of the fact you’re still here. You’ve taken a few hits, you’re carrying a few scars, and somehow you’ve made it another lap.

The older I get, the more I find some comfort in the mess:

The mistakes are baked in.
The regrets don’t vanish, but they stop shouting quite as loudly.
The good bits – the people, the work that mattered, the places that got under my skin – stand out more clearly.

Accepting that life is finite doesn’t make it smaller. It makes each remaining bit more significant. Every conversation, every decision, every day you still have the chance to do something marginally better than yesterday – it all counts more when you know there’s a limit.

I don’t have a neat bow to tie this up with. I still have days where I think too much about what I’ve done badly and not enough about what went right. I still wake up some nights replaying scenes I’d rather forget. That hasn’t magically disappeared with age.

But if I stand back a bit, this is what I see:

I got handed a life in a relatively safe and comfortable country.
I used it, sometimes well, sometimes badly.
I went further than that kid in Winkie Primary or Port Augusta had any reason to expect.
I met people and saw things that changed me, over and over again.

If I’m honest, for all the regret, I wouldn’t trade the adventure. I’d tweak some sections, sure. Rewrite a few dialogues. Cancel a couple of scenes altogether. But the basic story – a long, uneven, occasionally ridiculous, sometimes meaningful run through places and lives I had no right to see – I’ll keep that.

So as the creaks get louder and the horizon comes a little closer, the job now is simple enough to state, harder to do:

Make fewer new regrets.
Do a bit of good where I still can.
Stay curious.
Spend time on people and places that matter.

And this part is for you – the ones who’ve walked alongside me in real life or just travelled through these pages.

When my turn is done, think of me now and then. Maybe miss me a little. But more importantly, if there’s something in this story that gives you pause, or a bit of confidence, or a nudge to try one more time when you’re tired – take that and use it.

I don’t need statues or speeches. I just need to know that in all my days there’s a little bit that carries on: in the way you treat people, in a choice you make, in a story you tell your own kids or grandkids about “that bloke who went off up the bush and kept turning up in odd places.”

For now, I’m still here, still on the road, still adding a few footnotes. When the final chapter does arrive, I’d like this to be what’s left hanging in the air:

It wasn’t perfect.
It wasn’t polished.
But it mattered, at least to a few people, for a little while.

And for me, that’s enough.