Your sports team can’t guarantee you a good Christmas.

Nobody can. Not even yourself.

As I’ve gotten painfully older every year, I’ve realised that the best gift for Christmas is peace. And socks. But mainly peace. Peace can mean a lot of different things to different people.

For me, it’s diesel in the car, heating oil in the tank, coal in the scuttle, and everyone else sorted and happy. Not sweating on bills. Not worried about the Sky cutting off. Enjoying some nice socks.

That’s peace to me.

And thanks to you, I have it.

I don’t mean this to sound depressing. The opposite, actually. I know how lucky I am to work in this particular business at this particular time, when everything is more expensive, life is harder, and wages are getting tighter every week. That’s why I keep running sales even though Patreon keep telling me not to.

Fundamentally, I want Three Red Kings to be something you enjoy every day of the week, not something you have to think about every month.

Look, this job didn’t exist when I was in college. For most of my twenties, I was a site clerk — a labourer who could type, essentially — then a guy who “designed” construction brochures and other stuff for less than minimum wage out of a guy’s garage. Weirdly enough, one of the other things I designed is visible in the sweet rack in every shop in the country, which is always an odd thing to see from Life #2. I’m currently on Life #5, and I know it’s my last one. Cats have nine lives, but I reckon humans have around five, max.

Life #4 ended in the three weeks I was sat in the psych unit in Bantry. Life #5 began the day I walked out, and it’s gotten better and better with each passing year. I’m sick of talking about my past mental health issues because it sometimes feels like something I’ve benefited from. Like it’s something tawdry. Like an old anecdote that a standup tells about the immersion. It creates a distance from the reality of it. It turns it into an Unhappy Meal. To be consumed and then forgotten.

I suppose that’s the downside of talking about mental health in public.

My intent was to have it be something like this: I’m fundamentally nothing special, and if someone like me can move on from it, even with the wreckage it caused, then anyone can.

Life moves on, and you can move with it. But you have to move.

It feels harder to do at Christmas. It’s supposed to be the happiest time of the year, but that can almost make it worse. Everyone else seems to be so happy, so why aren’t you? Just know that if you’re feeling shit this Christmas, if bad thoughts are scratching at you in the pit of your stomach, if you’re lonely, if you’re heartbroken, if there’s a bill you can’t pay, or a present you can’t get, it’s shit. I know how shit it is.

But better days can be there for you. They are for me; they can be for you.

Fundamentally, you helped me become what I am today.

Your subscription has enabled me to do this fifth and final life. If it all ended tomorrow, I’d go back to doing something else. I’ve thought about that a lot, actually. What am I actually qualified to do right now? That’s a bridge I’ll cross if and when I sail into it.

For now, I’ll give everything I have to make sure you get the best content I can give you, every single week of the year. You deserve it, because I couldn’t be doing this without you and your support. I thought during the week that when I saw my little girl running towards me, jumping up and down like Super Mario with excitement, that’s because of a few thousand people, only a few of whom I’ve ever met, deciding that what I do from 8 to 4 every day is worth paying for.

And for that, you’ve given me peace.

Happy Christmas.

The rugby will look after itself, but you look after you and yours.