As a well-trained long-standing academic, caught in the hurricane of the sector’s corporatisation over the last 20 odd years, outcome became everything - making the list of publications longer, getting more grant money, watching my h-index slowly tick upwards. But in the same way I’m a late adopter of technology, I was also a late adopter of value for outcomes. I didn’t get off on this stuff. I resisted for a very long time. It just wasn’t me. I did eventually fall off the cliff though, and come on board to the game I knew I had to play and get savvy to, but it didn’t work. All that hard work to reach the goals I was now told were valuable didn’t pay off. But I learned a hell of a lot along the way. That journey brought me to where I am now - unapologetic for what I cannot unknow.

Yogis will tell you its the process, not outcome, that matters. I mostly agree, but not fully. Outcome gives our work direction and meaning. It is incredibly important. But the curvy path toward it is where the golden nuggets lie. That’s where you pick up the stuff the outcome was trying to tell you to get. Suppressing the importance of outcome can make it flash with a back-lashing vengeance. When I saw another publication get added to my list, the satisfaction was not in its growing length, it was in the words I had written - a small tangible ‘stock-take’ on where my brain and heart met at that point in my life. The old me had never really left ... And there is joy in both - the process and the outcome.