My goal is simple. To be happy doing something I enjoy doing, which is what is happening right now.

It has taken a fair bit of professional experience to get me to this point but I know I can fall back on it at any time.

I spent fourteen years working in the University with some of the most intelligent, self opinionated, interesting and genuinely awful people you could ever hope to meet. Talk about a melting pot. . .

If that doesn’t give you experience I don’t know what does.

There I learned about the media, internal politics, institutional ennui. Working with people with vastly differing views. Writing about many different topics. Nanotechnology one day; Irish Poetry the next; sports biomechanics and fine art the next. Learning about staff management and mismanagement.

A lot about crisis management. Also, that sitting though meetings isn’t a real day’s work. But the higher up the food chain you climb the more of that you do. The meetings. . .

It reminded me of Waiting for Godot: ‘Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it’s awful!’

Still, it was good preparation for what I do now.