I’m typing this from the De Vere Venues Horsley Park, where I’m staying for two nights on work expenses. It’s not quite as great as the website makes it look – at least, not when I’m not getting to mosey around the grounds before it gets dark. I’m here for a two-day training course on web application hacking, from the author of “The Web Application Hackers’ Handbook”. I picked up the first edition, a 700-page tome, on Friday and was expected to have read it by Monday morning; I skim read the first couple of chapters.
The drive down from Manchester last night took me nearly five hours, but that was at least partly due to the hotel not actually being anywhere near where the website map says it is, and poorly signposted, and the directions I got from the reception desk being wrong. It took me on the M6 and M40 between Manchester and Oxford, a very nostalgic journey from driving around places with 
inbetween_girl. Then up the M40 from Oxford to the M25, which was my old commute to work at red|hot|chilli. Finally on the road down towards Guildford, where I spent many years at school growing up. I spent most of the journey feeling a little melancholy about all this.
I’m wondering if this is part of growing up – I think a fair amount about the past, how life didn’t turn out how I thought it would, and how I’m not going to achieve some of the things I wanted to do. But on the other hand, it never gets past a feeling of gentle regret. I’m quietly enjoying my life these days, I’m pretty satisfied with who I am and what I’m doing. I recognise that I can never do everything I want to in this life – there just aren’t enough hours in the day. So while my younger selves might be disappointed that I’m not doing what they wanted me to be doing by this time, I think they’d be happy with how things have turned out.
