Nobody Tells You This at Sixty

Somewhere around fifty-nine, I started noticing a pattern. Men roughly my age would say some version of the same sentence, usually over a drink, usually a bit quieter than the rest of the conversation: nobody tells you this bit. Not the big, obvious stuff — everyone warns you about retirement parties and bus passes. The smaller, stranger stuff. The way your own reflection starts looking like your father’s. The specific silence of a Monday morning with nowhere to be. The way old friends drift for no dramatic reason at all.

I’ve spent thirty-odd years building things — rigs, platforms, projects worth more than I’ll ever fully understand the number of, in places I’d never have predicted as a boy in Methil. And somewhere in the middle of all that building, I turned sixty without anyone handing me a manual for it. So I wrote the one I wish I’d had.