I know from sitting around with injuries how difficult life will be without racing and riding winners.
Racing is a great sport, but we need people to come along and see that for themselves. Maybe they're not used to going racing or haven't been before, but I think people get a taste for it; they do come back.
I like challenging myself. I'm not a person who likes not to work.
I have found the right way to deal with my diet, largely through trial and error, but also by having good people around me all the time, and they have given me the right advice for my body.
I feel pressure every day. It is only pressure that I put on myself, but I would expect all professional sportspeople to feel pressure to perform their best whenever they are at work.
Most days, I have a slice of toast, then lie in a hot bath for an hour to get up a sweat. I have a sauna at the racecourse and then go and ride. On the way home, I might stop at a service station and have a bar of chocolate and a Diet Coke. And that's it, basically.
By the nature of the sport and the danger we face daily, we are very close knit. Some of us have spent most of our lives together. To give you an example, having spent two decades sitting next to Richard Johnson and seeing him virtually every day, I have probably spent more time with him than I have my family, and he the same.
From a public perspective, the Grand National is the biggest race of all, and not to have won it yet is definitely a failure. But there's been a lot of jockeys every bit as good and better than me that haven't won it - John Francome, Peter Scudamore, Jonjo O'Neill, Charlie Swan, to name a few.
When I was 18, I broke my leg, and my shin came right through - like I had two knees.
Horses are like people - they have different personalities. They can be nice, friendly and hard-working, or awkward, difficult and lazy. If horses were people, some would be on the dole, and others would be entrepreneurs.
When I'm injured, I eat everything - proper junk. That's the one thing about being injured so much, I get to treat myself.
It will not surprise you to learn that it is not uncommon for jockeys who struggle with their weight to starve themselves and spend hours in the sauna to lose a few pounds to be able to make a big-race ride.
If you break your sternum or your ribs, you can still move. It's going to hurt, but if you can cope with it, you'll do it.
For eight or 10 years, I got wrapped up in chasing records. Everything was a number. Didn't matter what I won, it was a number. Every horse I rode was a number.
My first winner was on Legal Steps, in Ireland, at Thurles, in March 1992. I rode for Jim Bolger, and his stable jockey was Christy Roche.
I've been on some very good horses which have died, and that's very tough to take. But as much as we love the horses, and care for them, human life is obviously more important. Some good friends of mine have died or been paralysed while doing a job we all love.
You only worry about your head or spinal column. Everything else, some way or another, will repair in time.
If summer racing didn't exist, I could go on holiday, yes, because nobody else would then be riding winners; but as long it goes ahead, I'll do it for the reason that I want to ride more winners than anyone else.
It's not hard to motivate myself because once you get a taste for winning races, you simply don't want to do anything else. You get a buzz from it. You want it every day. Only someone who has experienced winning can understand how good it feels.
I am disappointed when I don't win, because I want to believe I can win on every horse I ride, which is a ridiculous thing to think. Even if I'm on a horse that I have woken up thinking has no chance, by the time I've reached the course, I'll have convinced myself that it can win and will be disappointed if it doesn't.
