Ahh the sweet smell of stress in the morning.
Okay fine, it’s half past two in the afternoon but whatever, time is a construct.
I have spent the past four hours watching Below Deck Mediterranean, eating leftover room-temperature sushi and gulping down supplements with yesterday’s forgotten coffee.
Suddenly -
(side note, Mrs Fuller used to reprimand the use of suddenly ‘it is a poor unit of language’ she would say. I’ve made her sound quite Victorian there, it was only 2004. I think of her every time I suddenly, even though in this case, it was sudden; swiftly, without hesitation) -
it dawns on me that my friends are probably thinking about collecting their children from school.
30 is so weird isn’t it.
Half my friends are getting married and the other half are getting ghosted and I’m floating around in the middle, struggling to remember the last time I drank a glass of water.
The fact that some of my friends are responsible for feeding and hydrating and cleaning and educating actual little humans is wild to me. I can barely keep my houseplants alive. Plus, these are the same friends who punctured my lobes with safety pins at the back of the assembly hall. Surely they shouldn’t be in charge of anything? The same friends with whom I danced on tables and bar stools and smuggled the club sanitary bin out of the toilets and into the back of an uber ‘for a laugh’. The same friends with whom I spent every weekend of the summer holidays perfecting the ‘Death Mix’ recipe. Admittedly, I’m playing fast and loose with the word recipe there; it feels a bit formal to give it such introduction when all that was required was siphoning a little bit of every spirit in your parent’s alcohol stash into a plastic bottle to take to whatever park or party you were headed to. You’d give it a shake (predominantly in an attempt to un-curdle the Baileys) and neck the lot.
It makes me wonder whether I went wrong somewhere. Should I have grown out of that by now? Not that I have any burgeoning desire to chug a bottle of hard liquor and pass out in a bush but it would be nice to have the option.
Some days (and it really is only some days. Often, unsurprisingly, in the days before my period when my life is exactly as it was the week before, but now I experience it through a filter of sensitivity and gloom).
On those days, I feel like my life is only half held together by loosely crossed fingers. I feel directionless, without bearing, like I’m just treading water, waiting for the tides of life to nudge me in the right direction.
On those days I try to remind myself that life isn’t a board game and pulling the ‘marriage’ or ‘baby’ card doesn’t jump you ahead 5 spaces. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, I’ll get it tattooed on my bum, COMPARISON IS THE THEIF OF JOY. Besides, all the kernels go in the pot at the same time, they each turn into popcorn when they’re ready.
There’s too many metaphors in that paragraph.
I suppose what I’m trying to say is that I truly believe the most important thing we can do for ourselves, is cultivate an interior life that makes us happy. If you can fall in love with solitude, anything you add to that will be a Brucey bonus. We can spend (read: waste) a lot of time hypothesising and hyperventilating about how other people see us, when the only thing that really matters is how we see ourselves.
I’m not sure there is a right way to go about this life business. Granted, my warm sushi and reality TV binge are probably not the ideal, for many reasons.
I wonder how many people in their thirties are peering over picket fences, admiring everybody else’s verdant lawns, wondering why their own is so weed-filled and patchy.
I remind myself to stay off social media when my ground is unsteady; I need not tune in for today’s carefully curated episode of Milestones and Masterpieces. I reckon there’s a fair amount of ‘grass is greener’ going on, which always reminds me of a post I saw on Pinterest a while ago which reads ‘sometimes the grass isn’t greener, it’s fake.’
There is much wisdom to be found in the threads of an Urban Outfitters throw pillow.
Sometimes it is fake. It must be, no?
I reckon everyone’s path is as fraught with worry and uncertainty as it is admired by the people on the outside.
So the plan is to just be happy with what we’ve got.
And also a little bit of the plan is to get out of my pyjamas before time yawns into double digits. Aiming high.
With that said, I’d like to share with you a little list I’ve been collating, a list of
Small Things Worth Celebrating
- The existence of chilli salt.
- Completing your tax return. It’s such a stinker that even as I type this in late March, I’m still haunted by the fiscal heebie-jeebies brought by January.
- Waking up before your alarm and feeling well rested.
- Finishing a book.
- A really good key change.
- Doing the weekly shop and actually cooking with it, rather than getting takeaway ‘as a treat’
- Having hard conversations.
- Taking meter readings.
- Taking things one day at a time.
- Dolly Parton.
- Nectarine sunsets.
- Thinking positive thoughts about yourself.
- Thinking positive thoughts in general.
- The existence of the ocean.
- And of the moon.
- Falling in love; with yourself, with your friends, with your life.
- Dancing barefoot with your mates until your cheeks are pink and your toes are muddy.
- Spicy Margs.
- Doing the weekly shop and treating yourself to a takeaway afterwards. You deserve it.
- The knowledge that so long as you’re moving, you’re moving in the right direction. Keep taking whatever size steps feel comfortable.
- The idea that life actually kind of is like a box of chocolates, or perhaps more specifically, an advent calendar; behind each door, within each day, a small gift, an unexpected lesson, abundant joy.
I’m in a sketch comedy group called Just These Please, and in the early days of ideation, when we embark on writing a new show, you’ll often find a [more needed] at the bottom of the page.
That’s how I feel about this list, square brackets more needed. Because joy is absolutely everywhere. But that’s plenty of celebrating to be cracking on with for now.
Lots of love,
Georgie x
-eating leftover dinner for breakfast and hot breakfast for dinner.
-finding the thing that helps connect you back to you (*ahem* reading/listening to the growing pains - does everyone else also read along while Georgie reads aloud to them? Yeah, me too!)
-choosing to fold the clean clothes right after the drier has finished (look at me, no wrinkles)
-choosing to let the clean clothes make their own new folds while sitting in the drier for days (it’s practically a new blouse, it’s just economical)
[more needed]