You chose this at twenty-two

Think about who you were at twenty-two. What you wore, what you ate, the music you played in your first flat. Most of us would not trust that person to choose our sofa today. Yet we let them choose the work we do for forty hours a week, and then we stay loyal to their decision for thirty years out of a sort of stubborn politeness.

I did it. I went into HR because a careers adviser in 1994 said I was good with people and organised, which was true, and because the graduate scheme paid for a train pass. I stayed for twenty-two years. I was good at it. I was also, for about the last eight of them, quietly miserable, and I thought that was what being a grown-up felt like.

It is not. You are allowed to have been right then and to be different now. Changing your mind is not a failure of the person you were. It is the job of the person you are.