Finding My New Way

Why I’ll be setting out on the Camino de Santiago

Ever since I got back from walking John O’Groats to Land’s End back in 2006, April and May have been all about elections. Sometimes I was a candidate in them, sometimes an agent, sometimes a campaign manager, but all of them featured me delivering lots of leaflets and knocking on lots of doors.

This year, I won’t be doing any of that or feeling any need to do any of that because I’m out of active politics and not feeling any regrets about that decision

Sometime that feels like it was either a few weeks or a few decades ago there wasn’t a pandemic happening, and I was a politician and an academic who thought his mental health was something that might just sort itself out if I gave it long enough. Now I’m neither of those things and someone who’s actually working on my brain and getting myself up to a decent level of happiness.

That does, however, leave me with the question of just what’s next, and not just for the next month or two. My life’s taken a few odd, unexpected and even non-pandemic related turns over the last few years and I’m also aware that in a number of months that still just about requires me to use two hands to count them I’m going to be 50. I could have gone the traditional route here and invested in fast cars, motorbikes, overly tight…