What are your biggest challenges?
New Year’s Day 2026
It’s tempting to name my challenges as problems to solve, but that isn’t quite true. They are frequently awkward, demanding, sometimes painful—and yet they keep asking something of me that feels important. So rather than list what frustrates me, I’ll try to name what I’m learning in the process.
We’re downsizing our home, trading a five-bedroom house for a two-bedroom apartment. It means letting go of books I thought I’d hold forever and furniture that holds family history. The challenge is obvious—release. But I’m grateful for the clarity it creates. It turns out the essentials still fit: a smaller space, a lighter load, and a future that doesn’t need to be cluttered to be rich.
Leadership is another challenge, especially when I’m trying to hold nurture at the centre. Young adults make mistakes—sometimes painfully so—and I find myself standing between justice and mercy. It would be easier to default to policies alone, but mercy goes deeper than that. The challenge is staying with complexity; the opportunity is seeing humiliation become an opportunity for growth.
The federal government has new regulatory standards regarding Gender-Based Violence in Australian universities that come into effect today. Policies, risk frameworks, codes—we could call it compliance, except someone’s safety sits behind every clause. The challenge is precision; the result is healthy relationships. This is an act of care, not an administrative burden.
And then there’s transition. Retirement is on the horizon. The office will one day belong to someone else. A chapter will close. I don’t quite know who I’ll be when the role no longer gives meaning. But maybe the challenge is an invitation: more bushland tracks, more writing, more friendship, less urgency. If something in me is shrinking, something else might be expanding.
These are my challenges. I don’t expect to conquer anything. But I am learning that all challenges bring opportunities to grow: in clarity, mercy, purpose, interdependence, and maturity. None of them are easy but all of them are important.
The Afterword 
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