The other day, someone said to me: “I couldn’t do what you’re doing. I couldn’t have no structure in my day. I need to be busy. I need to be doing things.”
Fair enough. Each to their own.
But busyness to me feels like a trap that I want to use this year to wriggle free from. I’m going to give life in the slow lane a whirl.
Some people call it a micro-retirement. I’m not sure that’s quite the right term. It’s more a pause, a break between chapters. A chance to reflect what I’ve learnt and think about what might come next.
There’s a concept in running called periodisation. You train hard for a block of weeks, then ease back, allowing your body to recover and adapt. The fitness gains don’t come just from the training itself, but from giving your body time to absorb the work.
Nature understands this. Fields lie fallow. Heathland near us is periodically burned to create the conditions for new growth. Seasons turn. Things die back, endings happen, and space opens up for something new.
Im after more of that. So that’s the idea for my year out: to make some space, see the world from different vantage points, replenish and see what emerges.
I’m feeling excited about it. Here’s a sketch for the year ahead
Chapter one: The running monk
First up, a month of marathon training. I’m building towards the Frankfurt Marathon, keeping alive a dream of running a sub-three-hour marathon before I turn 50.
My wife won’t believe me but I don’t need to run sub-three to justify any of it. Ok, it would be amazing but I also love running.
What could be better? Time outdoors, running with friends, a clear goal, getting fitter and stronger, and the sheer wonder of seeing what your body can do. Then off to Frankfurt with a few friends to see what we can achieve together.
There’s something reassuring about running. You can strip life back to its essentials: put on your shoes, step outside and keep moving. No grand strategy required.
Chapter two: Marco Polo
When I was growing up, my cousins used to call me Marco Polo. I didn’t know who he was or what he’d done but I like the name. He was a Venetian merchant and explorer who became one of the first popular travel writers and whose accounts helped introduce European readers to the wonders of the Silk Road.
I’ve got a friend in Beijing, so I’m taking a one-way ticket to China and making my way home overland between November and Christmas, travelling through parts of the ancient Silk Road.
The rough plan is Beijing, Xian, up to the the edge of the Gobi Desert, on to Kashgar, then across into Kyrgyzstan and through Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. From there, across the Caspian Sea into Azerbaijan, before travelling home via Turkey.
It’s a route through vast landscapes and ancient cultures that rarely feature in our newsfeeds. Our attention firmly fixed on narratives we are familiar with and connected to. And yet the Silk Road has played a huge role in our own history as technology ideas and people have traversed the route. I’m looking forward to long train journeys, unfamiliar food, mountains, deserts and the occasional moment of wondering quite what I’ve let myself in for.
Chapter three: pilgrimage
After Christmas, I’m hoping to visit Jerusalem and Bethlehem, in the West Bank. It’s one of the three holy Christian pilgrimage sites and a places with extraordinary spiritual, historical and human import and this feels like a unique window to visit.
I’m also hoping to visit friends in Ivory Coast. And, because apparently a year of slowing down can still accommodate the occasional challenge, there may be another spring marathon in the mix - a different kind of pilgrimage.
Some habits, it seems, are harder to shake than others.
Chapter four: What comes next?
At some point, I’ll need to return to the world of work and start exploring what the next chapter of my life might look like. I have a few ideas I want to investigate, but I’m deliberately trying not to arrive at any firm conclusions too quickly.
I want to give myself enough space to discover things I haven’t thought of yet.
And there’s a bigger question underneath all this. What does it mean to reach the middle of life and begin to get older?
Part of it, I think, is learning to adapt. To understand the changes that come with ageing, to look after ourselves and to prepare for a different stage of life.
But I’ve also been thinking about some work by the American behavioural scientist Arthur Brooks, who hosts the Office Hours podcast. His book From Strength to Strength explores how we can find happiness, purpose and meaning in the second half of life. His argument is that the things that help us succeed in the first half of life don’t necessarily serve us quite so well in the second.
What happens when the rules change? When the next promotion or achievement becomes less important, or when we begin to recognise that there are limits to what and how much we can accomplish?
The Franciscan writer Richard Rohr explores something similar in his book, Falling Upwards. The first half is largely about establishing our identity and building a secure foundation. The second invites us to look more deeply at what that foundation is actually for. It’s less about the container we’ve built around our lives and more about what we put inside it. In Hinduism, the Ashramas describe the four stages of life, ending with renunciation.
Brooks talks about some fascinating research on happiness and ageing. Although the findings vary between studies and individuals, a recurring pattern is that life satisfaction often improves after midlife. His work also highlights an important divide in later life: some people continue to become happier as they age, while others experience a decline.
He identifies three common features of those who continue to get happier: they invest in personal relationships, they transition from a focus on attainment to service and they remain open to the spiritual or philosophical part of life. These are not guarantees of happiness, but they are things that the hectic schedule of life often obscures.
So here’s to staying open to people and ideas and curious about the world. A little less anxious about not knowing what comes next. And to a renewed sense of energy and enthusiasm for whatever the next chapter holds.
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