The adventure of a lifetime

Sipping a glass of wine, I flicked through the photo albums one by one, noticing how happy and excited I looked in each picture. They were of my trip to Antarctica in 2000, and another trip to Ghana and West Africa the following year. Yet now, 13 years on, and fast approaching my 50th birthday, I felt anything but happy.

Single and jobless, I’d never felt more alone. My career had been my life and I’d spent my 20s and 30s giving everything I had to it. When I became the director and then the co-owner of a consultancy firm, I felt I’d reached the peak of my success, that