I started filling out a survey - and was plunged into serious soul-searching | Adrian Chiles

I was full of positivity when I began reading the National Survey for Wales, but the questions quickly grew deeper and deeper, writes Adrian Chile

Have I done any hang-gliding in the last four weeks? Hang on (no pun intended), let me think. No, not as far as I can recall. No hang-gliding. Will leave that box unticked.

Filling in the National Survey for Wales is a dizzying experience. One minute you’re exasperated with how long this trivial pursuit is taking, the next you’re into some serious soul-searching. Guilt-inducing, thought-provoking, sometimes moving. There’s a lot going on.

They give you a £15 voucher for your trouble. At first this feels overgenerous. Half an hour later – as you grope around in rabbit holes trying to remember what pulses you ate yesterday, or how many minutes you spent walking each day last week – it starts to feel as if they’re not paying enough. But by the time I was done I was wondering if it was me who should be paying them for a) taking the trouble to ask and b) giving me something to think about.

This annual survey is commissioned by the Welsh government with the aim of finding out what people in Wales think about public services and life in Wales generally. It has been running since 2012. Like a wily bowler, it starts with some looseners – name, age etc – and then a series of straight questions on a steady line and length: who you live with, your ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, education and so on.

It’s when it gets into money stuff that things get more testing – starting with where you live and how it’s paid for, and on from there. Each question seemed designed to point out that I can afford the basics and more, and that many others can’t. Have I run out of mobile phone data at any point this year? Well, no, of course not. Can I use apps? Of course I can. But then I swallow as I remember my late dad who struggled with the very concept. “What actually is an app?” he’d plead.

By now this bowler’s delivering a series of searching balls I’m almost too ashamed to dispatch to the boundary. Do I need to cut back on essentials to pay my bills? Can I afford to heat my home? And off the back of these and more like them, the almost laughably penetrating poser: overall, how satisfied are you with your life nowadays? A mark out of 10 please. Having just established that I can afford to heat my home, and don’t have to go without essentials to pay bills, how in the world could I not now post a high score? I went for a nine – possibly a higher score than I’d have given 15 minutes earlier before I started filling this thing in. I’d have gone for a 10 but didn’t want to sound smug.

And now the bowler starts throwing down all sorts of googlies, some quite unplayable deliveries. To what extent do I feel the things I do in my life are worthwhile? Shrug emoji. How do I know? Who am I to say? Then, how happy did I feel yesterday? Erm, few ups and downs I suppose, but after this wake-up call I’ll be keeping the downs to a minimum.

It became like an introductory session with a practitioner of a new hardcore, tough-love kind of therapy. Do I experience a general sense of emptiness? Feel rejected? Have enough people I feel close to? Mercifully, here and now, I can answer no, no and yes to those three, but I suppose it hasn’t always been like that. Another welcome prod to be grateful, and to be grimly aware that there will be plenty of those ticking boxes here that you’d hope never to see ticked.

Yet I still left feeling disappointed with myself. Diet OK, alcohol intake less so, and exercise choices somewhat unimaginative. I’m going to put the latter right. If I get chosen again to fill this thing in, I’m determined to be able to tick at least one of the 10 martial arts or combat sports suggested, as well as the hang-gliding. I’m 60 next year. It’s high time.

• Adrian Chiles is a broadcaster, writer and Guardian columnist

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