Writing about oneself is never easy. And if it’s easy for you then we can’t be friends. Sorry.

Being asked to write this was like walking into a room of strangers and having to name my best talent or provide an interesting fact about myself. Hi, I’m Tom, and I don’t know what to say. This anxiety-inducing situation happened recently (although it was only internal training) and the ‘interesting’ thing I said I’d done this year was put sunglasses on because the sun had finally come out. Tragic.

Right, blog post. I suppose I’ll try dig into something that somewhat defines me, if such a nebulous concept as self-definition can be successfully explored in a scratchily written blog post. Outside of work, my life largely revolves around sport. Hi, I’m Tom, and I’m addicted to sport.

Watching sport, doing sport, talking about sport. Current fixes include running, preparing for a triathlon, skiing, warming up for the cricket season, and unashamedly jumping on the padel bandwagon (seriously, give padel a go – even if you feel a bit cliché).

But in terms of watching on the sofa, it’s much more cricket, motor racing and football. The F1 season is much maligned by my partner, who loses me to cricket on Saturdays for five months in the summer and then the F1 most of Sunday (I watch the F3 and F2 races in the morning as well, naturally).

I don’t know why I’m so obsessed with sport. I’m deeply competitive. Unattractively so, in all likelihood. That helps, for sure, with sport mostly centred around competing and winning and all. It’s fun to win, but the issue with watching and playing so much sport is there’s also perpetual loss. There’s always someone better, faster, more skilful, more talented. Even watching it, the team one supports tends to lose half the time.

So I don’t think sport can really be about winning. It’s probably just about the joy of competing. Trying your hardest and seeing what happens. And watching other people do it too. There’s a beauty in it. A sort of bottled up and broadcasted essence of human endeavour.

If this was LinkedIn, I’d make some ridiculously tenuous link between being a sport obsessive and me doing great work for my clients. It focuses the mind in a fast-paced, competitive environment! Keeps me composed and marching in the right direction! Feel the inspiration! But, nah, I just love sport.