Written in November 2016, during a period when several long-running assumptions about work, family, and stability were being forcibly renegotiated.
It’s almost that time of year again.
No, not Christmas. My birthday looms once more. In a matter of weeks, I’ll be 48. Time is dragging me, kicking and screaming, towards the big five-oh.
As usual, that has me thinking about where I fit into the world and into the lives of the people around me. I’ve written before about my struggles with health, diet, work, and the plans I keep making and failing to follow through on. So what’s different now?
After weeks of reading, thinking, and talking things through with friends and family, I’ve come to a difficult realisation. I’ve messed up. And in doing so, I’ve let myself down. Worse than that, I’ve let my wife, my son, and the people closest to me down, too.
For years, I’ve been afraid of working a conventional 9–5 job. Not because I think I’m above it, but because I worry that I won’t respect the people I work with or for. When that happens, I spiral. I question everything. I retreat inward, searching for answers that never quite arrive.
The last “proper” job I had took me away from my family for most of the week. For nine months, I lived in a youth hostel in Littlehampton from Monday to Friday, sharing a room with strangers. The work was hard, and none of my ideas were taken seriously, despite the fact that I’d been brought in to improve things. The owner, someone I thought was a friend, turned out not to be. We parted ways badly and haven’t spoken since.
I can’t get those days back. Time away from my wife and son was wasted. Worse, it actually cost me money to work there. That hurt, financially and mentally. I don’t think I ever fully recovered from it. All it did was reinforce my belief that working for others means having no agency and no impact.
So I fell back on what I knew. Web design. Photography. A few weddings. A couple of sites. Just enough to scrape by. Rhona started baking again, and for a while that helped. Pumpkin Cakes became a modest success. Between that, a bit of freelance work, and some benefits, we stayed afloat.
I wrote CV after CV. Letters to companies I thought might want someone like me. Nothing came back.
Eventually, a role opened up at a motorcycle dealership run by friends. Rhona had worked there years before. It seemed like the lifeline we needed. It meant closing the cake business, but we needed stability. Rhona took the job, and I became a house husband, running the home and raising our son.
Then everything shifted again.
We lost our home of ten years when the landlord cashed in on the property market boom. Moving pushed us back into debt. Then came the Kent Test, the local 11+ exam. Karta didn’t pass, despite trying his hardest. Most of his close friends did. Watching his disappointment was brutal.
We’re now in the appeals process. He’s working harder than ever. I struggle with a system that divides children so early, and he knows that too.
We’ve looked at alternatives. Steiner school. Home education. Both have costs, financial or otherwise. The Steiner option is viable only if I can find work that fits around school hours or earns enough to carry everything. Either way, it likely means shelving a lot of the projects I’ve started over the years.
Secret Agent Projects. Full Gas Foto. Rad Roads. The Rennsport Report. Ideas with potential, but ones that need time, focus, and money to grow. For now, they may need to be compressed and put away.
That’s the algorithm, I suppose. Reduce. Simplify. Prioritise. Do what needs to be done, not what feeds the ego.
I may be quieter online for a while. I will still write, because I need to. Some of it will stay private. Some things are not meant for public consumption.
Until next time.
Adieu.