22 & not a clue

It was the moment when I lay back & thought about falling asleep right there on my Australia towel that I knew trying to do pilates today after work was too big an ask. Motivation is hard. It only gets harder when you add in a 9-5 & take away a support network. You reach a stage in your adult life where you have thrown yourself so far away from your family in hopes of 'independence' a word you have bandied about since the age of 15 that you realise you are either too proud or too far away to ask for help; literally and metaphorically.

You have gotten yourself up on your feet by hook or by crook, you have savings & a flat & maybe even a boyfriend. Ok maybe not. What you don't have is sleep or a stress free mind but you are independent. Welcome to adulthood. The next step? Keep going. No one is behind you cheering you on, you're past that now. You are out there, on your own & the only person stopping you is yourself. Aim high they said, dream big they said. Well you did & you're out there. Now what?

Telling yourself to keep going is tough. It is hard bloody work & sometimes it is so exhausting all you want to do is spend the day in bed watching Geordie shore. We all need an off day from being an adult; to revert back into your 17 year old self. But how do you keep motivating yourself day after day? Life now is mapped out in weekends. It is about getting through the next five days to revel in the remaining two. Pretty depressing when you put it like that really. But that is our reality. We are striving for everything, fighting tooth & nail to get recognised, earn our place and prove our worth. Will it be worth it? Who can honestly answer that.

But the truth is you have gotten this far; don't stop now. Keep aiming high & keep fighting the good fight because there's space in this world for you; you just have to earn it first. All that you sow so shall you reap. It may just take the best part of the next decade. In the mean time remember to appreciate the little things. Like the fact that your crazy family will be there come what may, whether you want them to or not. Like the fact that as you move through life you will not know why you meet the people you do until they are there just in time.

Relax & enjoy the ride the say? I say sit back & give yourself a break. You've made it this far. You're doing alright kid. Breathe.
Now what's the next plan & how are we gonna do it?
Thatta boy.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that thinking too much leads to imploding and wrinkles. Which is why, dear readers, at the age of 22 I can plant potatoes in this forehead of mine.

I am a bottler. I bottle everything up, flood the lives of my friends with positivity, advice & motivation whilst I drown in an inner emotional whirl pool of self doubt & negativity. I don't take compliments and there are few people whose opinion or advice I trust. You can't tell me anything because either I've heard it before or I think you're full of shit anyway. I am a pathetic emotional enigma & the older I get the more I just roll my eyes at myself and get on with it.

That said, the more I open up about this & the more I write what I am truly feeling at that point in time; the more positive a response I receive. Are we all whirling alone together? Take the oxymoron however you like but I have evidence to suggest we are. Maybe it's the female condition to over think, worry and generally go mad about all the possible tomorrows? Or perhaps the people who respond to this blog are just crazy too.

Regardless of which ever unfortunate truth you choose to believe the fact still stands that if we do not communicate and process our thoughts productively it all just builds in our head till we find ourselves screaming at our psychology student Flatmate who is only trying to help as we row with every inanimate object in sight.

Breathe.

Ok so from the top. Take a pen & paper & list the main negative thought that circles through that brain of yours. Write a list of reasons for and against & then examine that list. In all likelihood it's an irrational thought which if you use your mind over your mood you should be able to reason down to a more manageable size. It's all very well indulging it to have something to stress over. However if this thought is stopping you from sleeping at night then this may not be such a bad idea.

If you continually practice the attitude of:

"If you don't like something: change it.
If you can't change it: change your perspective".

Then you will find your mind will be stronger than your mood. The brain is not a muscle however it works in the same way. Being ruled continually by your emotions is exhausting. Take control of your thought processes by merely reasoning them out.

That being said you'll have to excuse me; I have unfinished business with an oven & a heap of worrying to do for tomorrow.

I run around Melbourne in thongs or heels all day (talk about all or nothing), clutching my fake longchamps that is long passed its best. I throw myself into trams & trains wedged between tiny Asian woman & a man with a suspicious smell issuing from his bag. Faintly banana like. You know who you are. I get to my office, basement, air conditioned & light adjusted white room where I spend 8hrs of my day thinking about all the other things I want to or need to be doing.
I swan around the office as the youngest team member frustrated at the lack of men & bored with my lunch by 11 & I wonder what the hell I am doing here.

The weather in Melbourne since the heat wave passed has been similar to a teenager. Sweaty, changeable & prone to tears. I wake up wondering what the hell to wear for 23 degrees with rain all day. Its like some form of sadistic pathetic fallacy. This heat with this weather just freaks me. It throws me off. We are supposed to be in autumn & it's 24 degrees. I am a duck out of too hot water.

So I priss about all day wondering whether I will work out tonight at home.
I do Pilates you know. That's floor exercises where I think I look like the woman on YouTube I have enlarged on my battered Mac book for the sole purpose of finding my 'abdominals'. I'm sorry, what?
What is this? This fuckery I am calling adult life. I'm still checking to make sure my skirt isn't in my knickers most mornings. How do I qualify for life right now?

If I am an adult then how did that happen? Why did no one teach me at school how to fill in a tax return? Why was I not taught how to work out which electricity company is cheapest? This bill is in Chinese. Why did I have to learn to write a cover letter the hard way? And why does no one prepare you for what seems like an endless gap between right now & your career. Where are the rungs of this ladder I am apparently climbing?

Is it just me or are you also sitting on public transport heading for your air conditioned box wondering why the hell you tore your hair out over Pythagoras theorem at 15? That your mother was wrong, it will never be useful & as a financial administrator I can safely say that calculators are the only option. Curriculums are all fucked. Why are we teaching our kids Pi & not teaching them about tax & insurance. Why did I have to teach myself how to change a tyre?
Where has life learning gone.
And we wonder why teenagers don't know how to boil an egg. Seriously.

I have to believe that I manage quite well all things considered. If I can cross the world & hit the restart button without total melt down then I must have done something right. But as a person who gets upset when the kitchen knobs don't all face the same way ( & I am not referring to my male flat mates for a change) I am finding just coping with all this a struggle.

I am tired. I am hungry. I am bored. I bandy on on this blog about changing your life & positivity when frankly I am a grumpy so and so whose just full of good advice. So if anyone has any tips on how to be a successful adult throw them my way because if I don't get some sleep & my head screwed on properly soon I may find the banana smelling man & make the fat man on tram 59 sit on him.

Or maybe I just need it to be Friday already. I'm pretty sure in 20 years time I will still be the woman checking my knickers.

For me this word sums up all the excitement I feel when I think about my future back in London combined with all the mystery surrounding the next six months. I have not got a clue what's around the next corner and there is no word for that feeling; until now. Vorfreude.

This blog is brought to you from my bedroom. For a change. Normally it is ferociously typed out on my broken screen of an iPod next to the Thai lady in my armpit & the bearded man at whose feet I pay homage each morning.

Look here's the thing, I've been thinking. Uh oh. But really, how relevant are magazines like Vogue and Elle to twenty-somethings? I can barely afford TopShop. I mean, is anything in those beautiful pages affordable for a 22 year old, on a budget, with a penchant for red wine and vintage clothes? I think not. I spend more time checking for Judy's Vintage Fair updates and ASOS sales.

I bought Vogue in London when I wanted inspiration, if I was sick of the sight of my wardrobe & wanted advice on 'pieces' for the coming season I would delve within. I nearly always finished reading feeling even more broke and hopeless. Yet still I clung to the hope that each time I spent £4+ on it there would be something in it I could aspire to. Unfortunately not. It has left me with a crippling envy for all owners of Dior, Valentino & YSL instead. Now that I live in Melbourne Vogue is $7+ so it stands even less of a chance of leaving the 7/11 shelf for my handbag.

How many graduates actually buy Vogue? That's what I would like to know. If the photos are of 16-25 year olds then why is it only 30-50 year old women can afford the clothes? If the models are all my age and the designs aimed for my age group then why is it soo far out of the average twenty-something's reach? Maybe I should face facts; Vogue is not for me. I buy my jeans from Miss Selfridge because I'm a size 14 & my tops from TopShop Tall because I'm nearly 6 ft. I like vintage shirts and jackets & I will never fit into H&M because I have hips. The fact is I am too young, too big, too tall and too poor for Vogue.

Or maybe Vogue is too old, too small, too short & too unrealistically expensive for me ?
It's magazines like Look that I pick up these days, for less than £2 I can get an on-trend update with suggestions from affordable high-street (including Primark!) brands. Who, better yet, do real sizes that cross the double figures thresh-hold (Gasp!). Fancy that!

Look feels reachable, I can afford tops for £12 or jeans for £40. I can also aspire to their models. I recently met a winner of Look's 'Search for a Curvy Supermodel' competition, Lyndsey O'Hagan in Sydney. Besides being an absolutely blast to party with she was the most 'normal' looking model I have ever met. The Guardian wrote a lovely piece about the competition where she won her contract with 12+ modelling agency. O'Hagan believes she is normal & it's the industry that's fucked.

The high-street reigns supreme these days and so it should. What I want to see is magazines like Look gaining even more respect on the shelf so that it becomes that no-brainer fashion fix for women. Like myself, Look is slim, colourful but loud and proud. Really come to think of it, we have a lot in common, On a good day.

In our grandparent's generation you met someone, fell in love & got married. There was only one experience of love. You did not have many boyfriends or lovers. You met, courted, met the family, fell in love & lived out your life together. That was what happened. In some ways it appears simpler. It seems idyllic. Personally I can't imagine getting married to my first boyfriend as we were children at 15 and I barely know the man he has become now.

There is something to be said for how things used to be in the art of love. If your first love was your only love, and if that was all you had known then surely there's an argument to be made that these people knew less loss. I have yet to experience anything as painful and lasting as the loss of love. Some of my own break ups I will never forget, and will undoubtedly immortalise on a page at some point. If I haven't already. The countless poems, sentences & ruminated thoughts that the average teenage girl collects so early on these days must baffle the older generations. We must appear in constant states of heartache or heartbreak to our grandparents, who ask how that boy you dated 10 months ago is doing.





I can only assume as I no longer have grandparents. But I did introduce my ex to my Grandpa, I don't regret it but I do remember his guffaw at my words 'he's a keeper'. How right you were Grandpa. Do young women now not have the first clue as to what a 'keeper' actually is? Or maybe the concept is just null and void. It's a shame because we are conditioned to want the 'first, my last, my everything' and maybe this vicious hunt causes us to hold ourselves less dear and in doing so we rack up notches on our proverbial bed post.

Either way one thing is clear, we just don't fall in love the way we used to. Not most of us anyway. Even our parents can boast more lovers and a mysterious past. The twentieth century has ruined courtship and classical romance. I should know, I have spent the past three years studying this. I am also a veteran dater and renowned for my terrible taste in men. Until very recently I hasten to add.

The casual use of terminologies such as 'seeing' & 'dating' are alien terms to our grandparents. That's just it I suppose; casual, our relationships, our bodies and our hearts. We are too flippant about all of these things; I feel conflicted as I want to exercise my right as a woman to have casual sex. Yet I feel we may only be doing ourselves and perhaps our sex a damage in the long run as we do not place enough value on ourselves.


I will continue blindly stumbling through love regardless of everything I have just said. But I would say, that it would have been nice if it had happened that way. But in truth what are the chances. We don't wait anymore, least not the way man kind used to. Fewer women know now what it is like to wait for a man to return, not only from war but from life. Why can't two people wait for each other? Why won't we is a better question.

There is a man on the 59 tram who quite literally takes up most of two seats. He somehow always finds a seat and always has his earphones plugged in & an iPad wedged between his forearm & chest.

I have observed him often in the mornings, mainly because he appears blissfully ignorant of the raised eyebrows, disgusted looks & sharp glances from fellow passengers perched beside him. I'm sure its a life long practiced skill.
I have often thought to myself that if he tried to sit beside me I would say something & ask him to sit elsewhere. I have also thought how it would be better if people sitting next to him just stood instead of being so rude.

So this morning the only seat available was a few square inches beside this man. I perched precariously for most of the journey, cursing him silently & judging him for being the way he is. Surely he should be considerate of others and stand. Or apologise? Or walk?! The longer I sat there the more people got on, scuffing my feet, standing on my toes & sticking their arses in my ears. I was infuriated.

But as I sat there, I glanced over at his iPad & read the screen. He was reading a romantic online fan fiction story. The tale seemed gripping and judging by the pace of reading it was. The heroine appeared passionate yet vulnerable, the villain sleazy and beguiling. There was no sign of the hero, yet.

I am a hypocrite in every sense of the word, not just because I have many plus size friends, am plus size myself and simultaneously loathe & pity this man. But because I chose to be mean minded first, rather than practicing what I so often preach which is compassion. He didn't wear a wedding band, he wasn't particularly attractive facially, but none of that matters. I condemned him for what I saw on the surface alone.

After a few minutes more observing him and the story I started to realise he was just another A searching for a B. We all want to love & be loved in return, regardless of shape, size or form. Who dictates how and what we should love? Why should one body be shamed in the support of another & who says one body shape is superior in aesthetics to another?

It only takes one person to love you & think you are wonderful. Not the whole of society.

I'm ashamed of myself for being so cross at a man who was just going about his business best he can like the rest of us. The truth however is that I can preach about compassion all I like but at the end of the day society will still think for us. Change in views and attitudes work at a snails pace, there will always be prejudices and rudeness wherever we go. What helps change is the recognition of the negative and the search or discovery of the good and the things in common.

Tempus fugit has always been one of my dad's favourite Latin sayings. It mockingly hangs in the air betwixt beautiful consonants and two pairs of rhyming syllables.

After uni, time quite literally flies. Life begins to map itself out in terms of weekends. Something only your parents did, or so you thought. Trips and plans become your focus and before you know it it's March when yesterday it was January.

In six weeks I have moved out, held down a job, saved a substantial sum, had a no holes barred trip to Sydney & kept a nice lifestyle on the side. In just six weeks. It feels like I've been doing this forever. I'm happy. But I think it's time I shook things up a bit. 22 isn't the age to be comfortable. So I may bugger off to warmer climes, three days raining at 15 degrees will not do.

At this age, you want to be comfortable, but what you need is the swerving doubt constant in your life of will I make it? This isn't a challenge & I think, sadist that I am, that's what I need.

Spend more time doing what makes you happy and even more time doing things that have you on your fingernails. Because what else will you have to remember if you don't? That you had some savings & a job for a while. Was that it? When did you live?

Uncertainty is living. Do things that scare you.

I have been reading PostSecret since 2006. That is almost a decade. At 22 a decade is a long time. I have checked this site religiously every sunday since forever. Forever being 15. Because before that nothing really mattered. I have opened this webpage and found countless postcards which have struck a chord or rung true for me. They have comforted and given voice to thousands of black thoughts, doubts and secret happiness' that if you have never seen it before you cannot understand until you do.

The site gets updated every Sunday morning US time so I usually check it in the evening. It has always been part of my sundays for as long as I care to remember. I have two of the books, have written endless articles about it and given one memorably awkward classroom presentation. So today when I remembered to check it, this postcard was sitting at the top waiting to greet me.

Fate. I have always believed in signs and things happening for a reason. This is yet another one of those. This made me smile, I am not alone, someone else is in this lonely boat. Smile guys. We'll get through.