When I was young, I used to think about all the things I wanted to be when I grew up. Looking to the future, I’d see myself in lots of different roles. Lawyer (the first, and most intense of my Future Dreams), comedian (very brief desires, always stamped out by the fact that I’m not as funny as I think I am), and often writer (that one’s stuck).

It was – and still is – fun to imagine all the cool things I could do and be if I had the skill, and put in the effort.

But something’s changed since I was younger, and that’s that I think far less about what I could be, or what I want to do, and more on what I want to have done. Looking at writing, I am less likely to imagine myself beavering away at a desk with a typewriter (most dreams of writerhood involve those clackety old typewriters, despite the fact that they’re deeply impractical things), and more likely to imagine myself lying face down in a pile of scribbled-on manuscript, exhaling a sigh of relief and exhaustion.

Less likely to consider what I want to do in future, and more keen to think about what I want written on my gravestone.

“She tried her best” might be a good one. Or right now simply: “Knackered.”

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