When I was in my twenties, I always had my guard up and believed that was my fortress. Now, I seem to have dropped that because having your guard up doesn’t just mean that you’re not letting other people in; it also means you’re stopping yourself from growing. I thought it was a fortress but it was a cage, and after realising that, I’ve deliberately knocked that wall down.
This has been the most fulfilling year of all my five decades. I did things that I’ve never done before. I had to move to another country, I completed my Master’s, I finished my fourth book, I walked out of a deal that would’ve meant a lot to me, which was very scary but also the right thing to do. Now, I’m just wondering how I’m going to be able to top this year, and remembering the words of Dory from Finding Nemo: just keep swimming.
When I look back, I am surprised by everything I have done. My first job was to deliver fish when I was a teenager and after that, I was an assistant to an interior decorator. I don’t think I was successful in everything I ever did, but people now talk about adaptive intelligence (the ability of the mind to change in response to the surrounding environment) and that is something I’ve been doing since I first started working. I have a great curiosity about figuring out how things work and that helps me jump from one profession to another.
