The Musings Of An Opinionated Sod [Help Me Grow!]

Maybe it’s because I’m old, but it stopped me in my tracks.

Of course, the reality is death is coming for all of us the moment we are born, but when you hit my age – it has a more profound impact.

But what’s interesting is that as much as turning 50 brought up a bunch of issues I never knew I had – driven by the fact my dad was only 60 when he died – it’s also given me more energy to chase after the things I’m interested in.

To be honest, I’ve never needed help with going after the interesting, but when you hit my age you come to the realisation the things you find exciting and intriguing can’t be put on a list to check out later, you have to act now because you may run out of time to do them later.

Of course the shit about all this is that the more you go into something new, the more exciting and intriguing things you find – so the concept of ‘running out of time’ is an unnerving inevitability. But it’s also something else. Inspiring.

While I have always prided myself on doing interesting stuff with interesting people, the last 9 months have been some of the most inspiring times I’ve ever had.

From what I’ve helped create to who I’ve helped create it with to what I have learned … I’ve thrown myself into anything that sounded beautifully bonkers and the result is that I feel like I’ve had a 10 years of experiences crammed into less than a year.

And while the pandemic helped make that happen … as did being made redundant from R/GA … so did turning 50 years of age.

That feeling that death is coming so I’d better live more.

Focus on the interesting not the banal.

Creativity not the endless talk of how to do it.

It’s a big part of why we are in New Zealand. At Colenso.

While it would have been easy to stay in England after 25 years away – and I totally acknowledge will be back eventually – the idea of being in an interesting and stimulating environment we had never lived before was pretty hard to resist.

Not just because it was Colenso …

Not just because it was closer to Jill’s Mum …

But because we have always evaluated our life by what we’ve done, not what we have and this allows us to add a shit-ton more weird and interesting experience to our lives.

Which isn’t bad when you’ve turned 50.

So thank you death.