Trying to be good isn’t easy. Where do I begin? | Emma Beddington

I've previously shunned self-improvement, because it is not fun, but while tending for a garden, I am able to work on myself

How do you go about being good? I ask because I've been hung up recently on trying to be, well... better. It's a bit ridiculous and embarrassing; also, if asked to corroborate, my family would definitely say they haven't noticed. I'm not aiming for saintly. I haven't started believing some celestial bouncer will decide whether I get to live on a cloud with Captain Tom, or send me downstairs to change king-sized duvet covers and parallel park for all eternity watched by Hitler and Stalin while listening to HMRC hold music. It's more that I'm increasingly conscious of how far I still am from being a decent human, able to do what a person should: have healthy relationships, be compassionate, floss regularly, live within planetary boundaries, that sort of thing.

It's a mini-midlife crisis, I guess. Wouldn't it have been more fun to try ayahuasca or get radicalised on Facebook and start attacking 5G masts (which seems to be a middle-aged thing round my way)? It's certainly new.