Danny Kaye said life is a big canvas and you should throw all the paint you can at it. It sounds a bit cute, but as I get older it makes more sense.

Most of us don’t get a neat outline to colour in. We get a blank surface, a few random tins of paint we didn’t really choose, and very little in the way of instructions. Some of what ends up on there is intentional – the jobs we take, the people we try to hang on to, the places we move to on purpose. The rest is more hit and miss – decisions made too fast, things said that can’t be unsaid, the times we turned up when we probably should’ve stayed put, or stayed put when we should’ve moved.

From a distance, my own canvas is a mix of straight lines and mess: remote communities, deserts, airports, cheap motels, welfare offices, some decent wins and more than a few wrong turns. There are patches I’m content with and others I’d happily paint over. But it all belongs to the same picture.

I don’t think the aim is to end up with a perfect, tidy scene. It’s more about keeping the brush moving. Saying yes now and then. Trying things, even if the colours don’t land where you thought they would.

If there’s anything in it for whoever comes after me, it’s this: don’t wait around for the perfect plan. Use what’s in front of you. Put some paint on the wall. You’ll get bits wrong. That’s unavoidable. But at least when you look back, you’ll know the canvas is actually yours.