As I write, I'm interrupted by a dull thud. My partner has discovered medieval ceiling beams in the bathroom above a more recent suspended ceiling. O… - Lucy Kellaway

[Q:] What is the best thing about your job?
[A:] Chatting. And the fact that I can write about whatever I like.
[Q:] And the worst?
[A:] Chatting. (I'm always behind with my work) And the fact that I can write about whatever I like - which is terrible when the cupboard is bare of ideas.

People in professional jobs work for three reasons: money, status and the interest of the work itself. The main reason those in their fifties become sluggish is not that their minds are going, nor that the work itself has become too monotonous. It is that neither money nor status move them as they used to and the interest of the job is not enough to keep them going on its own.

[J]acking in journalism to become a teacher so late in life wasn’t brave – it was desperate. Though I didn’t admit it at the time, I was entirely burnt out – I had been at the same place for an interminably unimaginative 32 years – and was showing the classic symptoms. I was cynical about the value of what I did and of journalism as a whole – what was all this crazy chasing of ephemera really for? I also felt the columns I was writing were rubbish. The very thought of writing another one was making me feel so sick I had to find a way out and do something else entirely.