We all know where it came from. Well maybe some of us with a closet geek side do.

As Douglas Adams wrote the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy the meaning to life, the universe and everything is of course 42.

And here I am. 42.

You’ll remember that I have blogged on my birthday before with mixed results :)

It is my opportunity to go into hyper life analysis with some mixed results.  As ever, the last year has brought its usual recruitment and life highs and lows , with most of the lows involving a lonely train out of reading in the dark.  Or room 414 in the Travelodge in Reading.  Please, promise me, do not go to room 414. The life of an international jetsetter has never been easy.  (Made less so by my jetset being restricted mostly to Reading, London and Dublin.)

You will see that there has been a long pause in my blogging.  In some ways my blog represents a pulse of where I am, what I am thinking.

Yes, it is about recruitment but as you know it has always been more than that.  I share the edited lows but not so many that you think I am a depressive.  The reason for the pause is that I have just been too busy. Or specifically time short, I see these things as different.  Busy is good, I don’t want to have nothing to do but the reality is that when busy becomes something else, when busy takes over your whole life then busy is not a good thing.

For a while I thought I had lost my voice, lost my mojo maybe, that if I couldn't say anything good then say nothing at all.  This is all well and good but the days became weeks, weeks into months.  My birthday was going to be a milestone, that I would get my voice back out there but somehow it didn't quite happen that way. Busy got in the way dominating my weeks, my spare time, even my train time on the 7.20pm Euston to Manchester train.

Busy has no right to be there uninvited.

So this year as with all years, I am going to try and use by birthday as a kick to do something slightly different. I am starting late but the optimist in me says I will catch up. Whilst this is not an original thought as I stole the idea from someone else, if I pull it off then I will be the saviour of recruitment once more, the saviour of my blog and I hope is some way the saviour of that little bit of me that has been removed by busy.

So the plan is 42 at 42.

Snappy title isn’t it.

Well ok maybe not the most original but i’m optimistic that the outcomes will be. So here’s the plan, between now and my birthday next year I will ideally meet but at least talk to 42 people that have influenced my working life. Made me what I am if you will.  Now i’m not going down that Richard Branson, Bill Gates route but keeping it real. It’s the people I have met, real people. I would love to say I will meet them all in the flesh over a coffee or a beer but I am realistic enough to know that won’t happen, but then that is what Skype was invented for wasn’t it?

So the next step is to get an invite out to the 42 and take it from there. With their permission I will blog about our conversation, I think some good things will come out of it.

Watch this space, oh and in the mean time don’t forget to have a quick look at the wikipedia site about Douglas Adams.

He was truly great.

M.