At the grand age of 29, I’m feeling a bit old today... And I've been thinking about why this might be.
1 - It's the season to be all introspective (new years and all that, and none of us are getting any younger)
2 - I've just submitted my self-assessment tax return online and paid HMRC a pretty big chunk of money relating to that bill (meaning that I’ve not only managed to earn enough money through my business for me to live on, but for the government to want me to share some of it with them as well)
3 – I’m into my fourth year of running my own business (gulp – Nadine and I were pondering the other week whether this is making us slowly more and more unemployable…)
4 - I’m pretty amazed and horrified in equal measure to realise that we own/ have bought not only a flat (having bought and sold one before this), but also lots of bits of furniture, a fridge-freezer, a combi-microwave-oven, a dishwasher, a telly, a laptop and wireless network, an iPod, two Palms, a DVD player, four speakers and an amp, a freeview box, several pieces of art, hundreds of CDs and DVDs, a handful of musical instruments, and plenty other expensive pieces of electrical and other equipment/ gadgetry (meaning that it looks like all this “stuff” is pretty important to me when I’m not sure that it is, that I burn a whole lot of fossil fuels on a regular basis, and that I could be awake 24/7/ 365 entertaining myself somehow)
5 – I’m thinking about nipping in to the office later on to turn the heating up so that we don’t freeze when we go back tomorrow after the festive break (meaning that I plan excessively in advance, I like being warm, and that I won’t have to wear my thermals for once)
6 – Himself and I have been together 10 years… and married for more than 6.
7 - We worked out the other night that we’ve already got something like 23 weekends next year booked up with various things – work, holidays, family stuff, weddings, Sanctus, etc. (meaning that I’m turning into the sort of person who says “I can fit you in one weekend in August or it’ll have to be next year…”)
8 – I genuinely don’t like going to the cinema anymore because of morons who talk through the film
9 – Our Amazon DVD rental list has enough films on it for us to watch one per week for a year and still not run out, which is a bit much really, esp. given that more that I want to see come out each week (read in conjunction with no. 8 and no. 1’s subclause, above)
10 – Most people at 29 just wouldn’t be writing a list like this (for better or for worse, for them or me)
I’m sure this all sounds like me worrying about nothing, or bragging in a weirdly immodest way about how full my life is. I’m not, on either count I hope. I think I’ve just finally come to terms with the fact that I am a 15 year old trapped in a 29 year old’s body. And all this grown-up stuff, like dishwashers and hardback books and tax calculations, is a bit scary sometimes.
