“Don’t take life too seriously – you never get out alive” sounds like a throwaway line, until it sinks in that it’s accurate.

The older I get, the more it feels like a practical instruction. The big stuff – health, family, work that actually matters, the sort of person you are – deserves your time. Most of the rest probably doesn’t.

A lot of what eats up our energy is rubbish: small grudges, office politics, online noise, pointless arguments that won’t matter in a month, let alone a year. I’ve already spent more time than I should have on that sort of thing.

So the plan from here is pretty basic:

take people seriously,

take the work seriously when it matters,

and try not to take myself too seriously at all.

However this ends – and we all know how it ends – I’d rather be remembered as someone who turned up, had a go and could still laugh, than as the bloke who spent his last decade arguing with everyone about everything.