Hi Reader

The person you were before you got sensible

Three meetings this week, three completely different people, and by the third one, I was grinning a bit, because they were all telling me the same story without knowing it.

The first, I'll call her Fran. Fifties, senior job in the public sector, the kind of role that looks great on paper and had quietly become the least satisfying work of her entire career. And the whole time we're talking about pensions, what she actually wants to talk about is her studio. Because Fran wanted to be an artist. Always did. Then, in her early twenties, somebody sensible told her art wasn't a career, steered her onto a proper path, and forty years later here she is, good salary, senior title, and an artist she folded up small and put in a drawer in about 1985.

The second, call her Denise. She's come through an absolutely brutal decade, a bruising divorce, a financial mess that took years to dig out of, the sort of stretch that would flatten most people. And when I ask her what she's looking forward to, it isn't money, it isn't security, it's the thing she makes with her hands. A craft. Something small and quiet and completely hers, that survived everything the last ten years threw at her and is still there, waiting for a bit of room.

And the third, I'll call him Colin. Started his working life at the absolute bottom, sweeping floors, retrained into something highly technical in his forties, then spent years caring for his mum until she died. A lifetime of graft and duty. I asked him what he wants from retirement, and he said, and I'm quoting him exactly, "taking the piss, really. Really enjoying myself."

Three people. Same realisation. There's a version of me I shelved to be sensible, and I'd quite like them back now.

The sensible self and the shelved self

Here's a thing I've come to believe. Most of us are carrying around two people.

There's the sensible one. The one who took the steady job, paid the mortgage, did the responsible thing, showed up for forty years. That person built everything. Genuinely. I'm not knocking them, the sensible self is why Fran's got a full pension, and Colin's got two houses, and Denise clawed her way back to solid ground. The sensible self kept the whole show on the road.

And then there's the other one. The one who wanted to make art, or work with their hands, or just muck about and enjoy themselves. The one you were before somebody told you to be realistic. That person didn't die. That's the bit people get wrong. They think they gave up on it. They didn't. They just put it in a drawer and got on with life, and it's been sat in there quietly the whole time.

Fran didn't stop being an artist. She just stopped doing art. There's a difference, and it's a big one.

Why we put them in the drawer

We shelve that self for reasons that all feel completely sensible at the time.

Sometimes it's duty. Somebody needed you to be reliable, so you were. Sometimes it's fear, art doesn't pay, the craft won't cover the bills, better play it safe. Sometimes it's just the path of least resistance, the proper job was right there, and the dream needed effort and risk, so you took the road that was already tarmacked.

And none of those are stupid decisions. That's the frustrating bit. Every single step that led Fran away from her studio was a reasonable step. Be sensible. Get security. Do the responsible thing. Look after everyone. It's just that you string forty years of reasonable steps together, and you look up one day and realise you've spent your whole life being the sensible one, and you never once let the other one out.

The tragedy isn't that people make the wrong choice. It's that they make forty perfectly right choices in a row and end up somewhere they never actually wanted to be.

Here's the good bit

But this is the part I love about this stage of life, and why I do this job.

Retirement is when the drawer opens.

For the first time in decades, the sensible self has done its job. The mortgage is gone, the kids are grown, the salary has done its work. And that means the other one, the artist, the maker, the bloke who just wants to enjoy himself, finally gets some oxygen. Not as a hobby squeezed into a wet Sunday. As the actual point.

Fran isn't retiring. She's going back to being who she was before someone talked her out of it. Denise isn't stopping work, she's finally giving the best of herself to the thing that got her through the worst years of her life. And Colin, God bless him, is going to go and take the piss and enjoy himself, and after everything he's done for everyone else, I can't think of anyone who's earned it more.

That's not an ending. That's the most alive some of these people have felt since they were about twenty-two.

The catch, because there's always one

Now, the honest bit. It never feels that simple from the inside.

Because the sensible self doesn't hand over the keys quietly. It's kept you safe for forty years, and it is not about to shut up now. So it whispers. Who do you think you are? Isn't it a bit indulgent? What if it goes wrong? Shouldn't you just stay another two years to be safe? Fran's own employer literally told her she couldn't retire yet, as if her life ran on their calendar. That's the sensible world talking, and it is very, very persuasive, right up until you notice it's been talking you out of your own life for four decades.

The permission you're waiting for is never going to arrive in the post. Nobody hands it to you. You have to give it to yourself, and the mad thing is you're allowed to, you've been allowed to the whole time, you just never opened the drawer.

The question

So here's the one I'd sit with, whatever stage you're at.

Who were you before you got sensible?

What did you fold up small and put away because somebody told you it wasn't practical, and is it still in there, waiting for a bit of room?

Because the sensible self was never the real you. It was the you that the mortgage, the duty and the times required. It did a heroic job. But it was always meant to be the support act, not the headliner, and at some point, hopefully while you're still fit and healthy and full of it, the other one gets to come back out and finish what they started.

Fran's going back to the studio. It only took forty years. Don't let yours take any longer than it has to.

P.S. - Tell me who you were before you got sensible. The thing you shelved, the dream someone talked you out of, the version of you that's still in the drawer. Hit reply, I read every one, and this week I'm genuinely nosy about what people put away and are only now getting back out.