Every day, Monday to Friday, I sit on a tube going down to the Square Mile. I sit and look around the carriage to see all of the usual faces. I do not know a single one of them and I’ve never talked to any of them. I might have sat on the same train as all of these people for the last ten years, but I do not know them.

Yet, I know them implicitly. They are me. I’m not saying that they exactly me, but they are my equivalents. We all work in the financial world. We all accept the long hours of the job because of the remunerations. We take on the stresses and strains, knowing that it won’t last forever and that one day we will look back on these days and appreciate them.

Our jobs are not life critical. We are not doctors, we do not race to the scene of disaster and save people on the edge of death, yet most days we feel like we have been on the forefront of pressure. We live on the edge of success and failure and thrive on the life we are living.

When we finish work and we all traipse back to the station you can see the look in people’s faces and know that they have had just as stressful a day as you.

It is right at this point that we diverge from one collective person and all take back on our own personalities. We slump down into the seat and try to relax. We try to calm our hearts and put our nerves back together. The grey hairs will come quicker if we do not try and relax at some point in our days.

It is these vital few hours, when we are trapped on the train and can do nothing but sit down and relax. There is no way we could work in the openness of the carriage. Conversations would not be private and a screen would be much to tempting for a crowded carriage of our competition.

So we relax and find something to take our minds off of the day’s tasks. This is the difference in every one of us. We all do this one thing in our day slightly differently.

You’ll see people pick up a free newspaper and mindlessly read yesterday’s news. Well, I say news, but I really mean useless and asinine content based around the daily life of some non-celebrity of someone who happens to have a few brain-dead followers on a random social media platform. The paper doesn’t contain anything useful, but it gives the mind time to breathe, to not have to work and to just sit and looks at pretty pictures of unimportant things.
Then there are the people who try to wind down slowly, these are the people who will be sat re-reading The Financial Times. They will have experienced each and every one of these stories today, their work will have been affected by any of the reports and all of the speculation. So reading the paper, is not about getting a competitive advantage, but more about confirming what they knew and not forcing the brain to have to take in any new information.

Then there’s me and my wind down. I pick up the pad and head straight to TheBingoOnline.com. I take the option of fun and games to wind down from the day. I like playing with numbers still and find this to be my best wind down. After a few games of bingo, I’m ready to start my daily battles again.