For most of my life, I thought I was chasing something. Money. Success. A better house. Another idea. Another business. Another chance to finally become the person I kept telling myself I could be. I was always looking towards the next thing. It took me a long time to realise that life wasn’t waiting for me at the finish line. It was happening the whole time. It was there in the ordinary evenings when everyone I loved was under the same roof. It was in the sound of my daughters laughing. It was in the ridiculous conversations, the drives with nowhere particularly important to be, the ideas that probably weren’t going to work but that I couldn’t stop thinking about anyway. It was in being Dad. And if you asked me now what I’m proudest of, I wouldn’t give you a number. I wouldn’t tell you how much money I eventually made, how many people watched my videos, which mad business idea actually worked, or whether I ever became the successful bloke I spent so many years trying to turn myself into. I’d tell you about my girls. I’d tell you that they grew up knowing their dad loved them. That I was there. Not perfectly. Not without getting things wrong. But there. I’d tell you that somewhere along the way, the frightened young lad trying to work out where he belonged became the man his children ran to when they needed to feel safe. And perhaps that was the great plot twist of my life. I spent years believing I needed to become somebody. I already was somebody. I was their dad. I was her partner. I was Joey. A bloke with a head full of ideas, a tendency to dream far bigger than was sensible, and an almost irritating refusal to believe that tomorrow couldn’t be better than today. There were chapters I once wished I could tear out. I wouldn’t now. Take away the wrong turns and you change the road. Change the road and maybe I don’t end up here. So I’ll keep every page. The embarrassing ones. The painful ones. The funny ones. The ones where absolutely nothing went according to plan.