Fifty Two to 30

Do you ever say something and people look at you like you’re crazy? Not because you are crazy, but because you just responded with “sploosh” and a peculiar hand movement to them saying something innocuous like “can you put sunscreen on my back?”. Every social circle has its own little things unique to it – and language is probably one of the more fascinating deviations. Just as there are certain things I would never say around my family, there are certain phrases I’m more likely to use. The same goes for certain friends. I could make up (or heaven forbid, research) where these linguistic peculiarities come from and say something profound about it, or I could just entertain myself with some of the more unique developments I have experienced. “The nurses are singing” When I was younger, we had a physical copy of a newspaper delivered to our house every Sunday. You know you’re getting old when the thing you used to do as a child no longer exists. Anyway, I loved to read it while ...

Turning thirty is, for me, filled with all kinds of existential crises points. I’m constantly harassing those around me for advice on how to avoid feeling like I wasted my twenties. What should I do? What should I have done by now? What do you wish you had done before you turned 30? Is there anything you can’t get away with doing once you’re out of your 20’s? Working in finance the answers are always the same… ‘buy a house’, ‘save for the future’ and ‘invent time travel so you can buy Bitcoin in 2012’. Although I have achieved financial stability, I am still on this quest to feel as though I really deserve to unlock the ‘30’ badge, and I haven’t just stumbled to that part of the map by mistake. This leads to a lot of surfing through lists of idealistic goals of once young writers now riding the waves of old aged regret. I find myself reading through the list with smug satisfaction that *I* have achieved these things already. What use is smugness on the internet if you don’t use it...

Last year I went through a bout of depression. I can't say it's something I enjoy discussing, but today it felt like the day to get it off my chest. I come from a long line of women who have battled with their mental health and lived my early life with a steely determination that I would not continue the tradition. When I did finally succumb to the realisation that I had not escaped the matriarchal curse after another uplifting afternoon of crying in the ladies bathroom, it was coupled with the shame that I had failed myself. I was a ‘textbook case of self-neglect’ according to my therapist, GP and HR case worker. My attempts to resolve my emotional response to heart break, loss, change and fear with alcohol and retail therapy were not endorsed by the experts. Growing up, Mum always said that bad things come in threes. As I got older I thought this meant that vehicle registration renewal, green slip and comprehensive insurance all being due at the same time would be as b...

What is it about post-holiday blue’s that is extremely exacerbated by returning to the office? We’ve all felt that dread as the holiday comes to the end and we face the hours long drive, flight or train ride home that signals the end of our gallivanting, relaxing and excessive caloric intake. There’s nothing quite like flying over the Western coast of Australia in your shitty economy seat en-route from Dubai and realising that means you still have five more hours of this hell to really sober up any happy holiday feelings you had left. Returning to your job is a whole other crushing blow that really destroys it all. You arrive in the office after struggling to return to your normal routine (bonus points if you’re still jet-lagged and/or hungover), wearing a tried and tested outfit, Vegemite sandwich in your lunch bag and still a slight getaway glimmer in your eye. Then it hits you, there’s the to-do list you left for yourself, there’s that colleague whose laugh you can’t stand, the...

The turn of the New Year is always a time for reflection on the things achieved, or not achieved. Whilst walking to the train station on New Years Day it suddenly occurred to me that I definitely knew what my worst moment was- probably because it occurred recently and the embarrassment still made makes me stomach sink. My best moment was harder to pin point. This year has been one of my hardest yet, and I can’t say I have come out of it a better person or with any sort of revelations, if anything I’m ashamed of how I have handled it. That said, there were plenty of fantastic things that happened in 2017- but let’s finish on the high note and delve into the disaster that was December 22.   It was my best friends birthday, we were having a party at our house with our closest friends. It was also the last working day of the year before the holiday period and so I had headed home early to prepare for the party. To this day, I don’t know what happened to cause the awful mood I foun...

Recently, I was invited to join a Facebook interest group. My sister, cousin and I had a mutual interest in reducing our environmental impact on the planet and my dear cousin, Ruth, had found the “Journey to Zero Waste” Group on Facebook and added us all to it. This group is now a constant source of entertainment for me. I learn from it and I get to enjoy the wild stupidity of others. It’s exceptionally hard to maintain an interested attitude when only about 20% of the content interests you, and the other 80% makes you scream with rage and text everyone you know about “Mindy on Facebook who think personal cloth is a good idea” (more on THAT later).  Before I delve too far into the topic, there are some things you should know. I like to think of myself as a practical, pragmatic and patient person. On Facebook though I am self-righteous, impatient and argumentative. There is something about anonymous people telling the world things that are misinformed or ill advised that boils ...