Last year I reached the age of 65.  Which is the age at which, for most of my working life, I expected to retire.  And while the state retirement age may be receding ever further into the distance, like the end of a rainbow that one never quite reaches, I’m lucky enough to be able to afford to retire at 65 if I wanted to.  And, rather to my surprise, I do find that I am getting older.  Yes, I always knew in my head that old age would catch up with me one day, but I suppose that in my heart I rather felt that when the time came, someone, somewhere, might make an exception for me.  Well, er, no.   There's no doubt about it.  I’m getting older.  And whilst I’m fortunate enough to be able to live a pretty healthy life, I have a list of medical conditions that do require managing.  And managing them would be assisted by reducing my stress levels.  And we all know that mediation can be pretty stressful, right?

But here’s the thing.  I love mediating.  It’s my job, sure, but it’s more than that.  I could say that it’s my vocation, but it feels like more than that, even.  There’s a line in a Proclaimers' song that runs “While I’m worth my room on this earth…..”.  Well, if I’m to be worth my room on this earth for anything more than being a husband, a dad and a grandad it can only be because I mediate.  Mediation is what I do.  It’s who I am.

So, no, I won’t be hanging up my flip chart just yet.  Mediators should probably come with some life experience and hopefully at 66 I'm just hitting my prime as a mediator!  But perhaps I do need to pace myself.  Not least because the better I pace myself, the longer, and therefore, the more I’ll be able to mediate.  So, in the finest tradition of mediation, I’ve come up with a compromise between the two imperatives of de-stressing, on the one hand, and continuing to mediate on the other.  I shall do away with travelling the day before a mediation, and travelling back the day after.   Which will also do away with all those hotels that promise you a quiet room where you can prepare and sleep before your mediation and then put you in a room above the bar which is hosting a wedding reception until 2.00am.  And in truth, I don’t find the actual mediation stressful.  I hope that those who are kind enough to instruct me would agree that my mediation style is pretty laid back (albeit, hopefully, focussed when it needs to be).  It’s the travel, and especially the overnight travel, that brings the stress.  

And whilst I think that’s the right compromise, a compromise that will enable me to mediate on for (hopefully) years to come, it means there’s parts of the country I won’t be mediating in any more.  I’m sorry about that.  Farewell, Manchester.  Farewell Leeds, Bristol and Birmingham.  Farewell the Balsall Common Premier Inn.  To my friends outside London and East Anglia, I’ll miss you all.  I hope we might still see each other for the occasional mediation in London.  And if you’d really like to mediate with me, and you’re based somewhere that I can't really reach by 10.00 or 10.30am without a night away, maybe we can work something out with a slightly later start time so I can get there from deepest Norfolk.   Or we can always mediate online.  Much of my work has remained online.  We all know, online mediation works.  And, at least for me, it has a higher success rate than in person mediation, year on year.  And it’s cheaper.  More convenient, cheaper, and a higher success rate?  What’s not to like?

Thanks for understanding. I hope to be seeing you around…

Martin