I have realised I am definitely in the midst of a midlife crisis – albeit a very me version of it. No sports cars, motorbikes or inappropriately young women but no less of a cliche in my own way. The closer I get to 50 (I am 47) the more these thoughts preoccupy me.

I think the whole lockdown and catching COVID has accelerated things but I am certainly spiralling. Between the constant new Adidas purchases, all the bloody Hiut jeans, overwhelming amounts of new art and the latest enormous box of spray-paint I am now basically living like an unsupervised teen me with a little disposable income.

I’m also massively questioning my career choices – it isn’t that I’m unhappy but I look back on all the things I could have done if I’d been braver (turning down jobs in London a couple of times at big moments, opportunities to move to the US and New Zealand for instance) or had stuck it out at some places (Jisc and ONS maybe). Would I have made it to CDO somewhere, could I have made a life somewhere other than Bristol or would I have avoided all the anxiety if I just stuck with an organisation?

There are currently soooooo many tabs open in this browser about working while travelling…if the world ever gets even semi back to normal I want to take a sabbatical next year – this has been on my mind for a while now but it feels pretty midlife crisis-y in context. The plan was to spend some time in NYC (like weeks instead of days) and use it as a jumping off point to tick off some other places I wanted to visit (Boston, Chicago, Nashville…amongst others) but given COVID, #BLM and just Trump in general I’ve started imagining other places (Toronto, Vancouver, Buenos Aires, Bangkok, Georgetown…being me the local street art and street food is more important than beaches etc!). Not living/working in a different country is one of my biggest regrets but also something that maybe I could still manage. Do that ‘nomad’ working thing for a while – it is clear that all I really need to do my job is a laptop, broadband and a headset so in theory it should be doable…but again am I brave enough?

My regular dalliances with writing a book are part of this as well – that definitely became more pronounced in my 40s. I really should come to terms with the fact I’m never going to do it!

Aaaarrrggghhhh – who knows. I am writing this to just get some of this out of my head – given the state of the world at the moment it isn’t like anything is going to change any time soon.

Now which tab has those new Superstars…