I’ve never been a planner. At school I was always branded “bright, capable, but must try harder. We know he is capable of much more” Well, I have news for you teach. I’m not capable of much more because if I were capable of much more, I would have done much more wouldn’t I. Oops I digress.

The point I was supposed to be making is that somewhere early on in my development I took a left turn and traded in some fairly mundane but rather vital faculties for some slightly glamorous but insufficient ones. Consequently I have a superb ability to take leaps of intuition, change my perspective, visualise complex relationships in the abstract, but am rather lacking the ability, for example, to notice that since it was Monday two days ago, it’s probably not still Monday, and thus that Thursday deadline is looking rather more urgent.

With age has come a mellowing, and the hope that someday soon the parts of my brain that talk too much will shut up for long enough for the rest of me to be getting on with real life.

One of the upshots of the last 25 years of handling this baffling utter lack of eptitude is that I try to avoid anything that involves (a) promising to be somewhere at a specific time (b) remembering to bring more than one thing (c) the requirement to keep the eye on the ball for sustained periods. This is why software engineering and other crafts are great for me: You can assemble your tools in one place over time, eliminating the need to remember what tools you need; the piece in progress is its own to-do list if you work methodically; and you can always put it down and come back to it, and quickly figure out where you were.

This avoidance is not really a good move, as it means my weaker side doesn’t get exercised, and I end up doubly discouraged to involve myself in daunting activities such as house buying, making sandwiches for eating at work, etc.

The one thing that really inspires me to fix this is travel. I love travelling to other cultures and soaking up their atmospheres, their accents, their landscapes… but there’s one major hurdle: When flying, you REALLY need to be in the right place at the right time, with ALL the necessary items, and no you can’t doze off for an hour if your plane’s in 30 minutes.

This year’s big planned trip was Australia (flying out on Friday). Once that was booked suddenly I got offered a business trip to America. I remember thinking last January that this year was not going to calm down till October. Well it looks like I’ll be back to California in October. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not complaining - but BOY am I getting practice at doing what I’m not very good at! This has to have been one of the most stressful years I’ve had - someone spotted a grey hair yesterday - but I really do believe that I’m starting to get the hang of things a little. I think someone upstairs decided I needed lots of practice, and thought what better than a deep-end sink-or-swim aproach?!