For a man of my age, I probably give the whole question of “what would you wish for if you got three wishes?” rather more time and attention in my head than it deserves, what with it being something (probably) impossible, but it’s something to keep my mind occupied with when I’m trying and failing to fall asleep.

I’ve had numerous possible answers over the years — never resorting to “I wish I had three more wishes”, I might add — but right now, at a particularly shitty point in my life, I find myself settled on three pretty-much definite answers.

• 1. I wish my wife and I would be in 100% perfect health, mentally and physically. I’ve struggled with mental health for more years than I was probably aware of it, and it hasn’t gotten any easier over the years. In fact, as I get older, it’s got more and more difficult, particularly since several attempts to get a career started have gone nowhere — often through no fault of my own, as in the case of my misadventures in games journalism — and left me feeling increasingly useless and worthless to the world at large with each passing year.

  Alongside that, my wife has been struggling with a chronic pain condition that I’m always forgetting the name of for well over a year now, and it’s taking its toll on both of us. She’s been off work for several months now, and the pain has had a severe effect on both her mental health and, by extension, since I’m unable to offer any sort of help besides just being here when I can, my own as well.

  If we were both 100% perfectly healthy mentally and physically, we could get on with enjoying our lives the way we both want to. Life wouldn’t feel like a constantly uphill struggle which, frankly, it does at the moment.

• 2. I wish I had a million pounds. It may be a cliche to wish for a large amount of money, but if I had a large amount of money, it would remove the other main stressor in my life that is at least partly related to our physical and mental health issues: money worries. I don’t even want to buy anything particularly extravagant with my hypothetical fortune; I’d simply pay off my debts, quit my job and continue living the way I do at the moment, pursuing my own passion projects in my own time without having to worry about where the money to pay the next bills and the mortgage is going to come from. The rest of the money would simply go towards day-to-day expenses and perhaps a few guilt-free treats.
• 3. I wish I had the ability to switch between being a man and a woman at will. This one is less grounded in my actual real-life everyday existence right now, since having the ability to do this wouldn’t make my current situation any better, but it’s something that I’ve always returned to when pondering this question, and a concept in general that I’ve always found fascinating from the perspective of walking in “someone else’s” shoes. I won’t lie, part of my curiosity in this regard is sexual in nature — I mean, come on — but also I feel it would just be interesting to be able to switch between two completely different bodies and appearances at will, making use of the most “appropriate” one for various situations, whatever that might mean.

So there’s my three wishes. If any Internet-connected genies are watching, I will happily accept just the first two if you’re running a bit short on mystic mojo.