30 before 30

As I sit typing this Des'ree Life (oooh life) has just come on BBC radio 2 and I can feel in my shimmying shoulders that this post could get a little heavy. I mean heavy in a "what a time to be alive!" way - not heavy in a "I am so anxious I am gonna cry" way, but still, deeper than a post about how much I love pasta.

Shortly after I turned 21, just after I had graduated university in the midst of a recession and had no clue what to do with my life now I was off the education conveyor belt, I made a list of things I wanted to do before I reached the not so ripe or old age of 25. And not to boast gang, but I did loads of things. 

I ran a bloody marathon, literally. The London marathon (when I had never run anything ever before). I backpacked alone through Vietnam, Cambodia and India. I stayed at an Ashram and at least on the days when I was not held captive in my room by crazed monkeys on my balcony, I went to sunrise morning and meditation classes where an actual yogi with a long black beard and white harem pants attempted to push a tube in my nose and take it out my mouth. (That did not work, and was not per say on my list, but going all Eat Pray Love and staying in an Ashram in the Indian Himalayas was).

9 nice things, and 3 slightly bad things | July and August

So I have just got back from a chicken wing festival (!!!) and decided this was as good a time as any to boot up this little baby again.

Well a good time as:

1) I only have 1 more wedding and 1 more hen do this year, so I have time in my weekends to waffle on the internet again now they are not filled with pedal-bussing round London in 30 degree weather (my friend Alice's hen do, mid June), falling in a river (Katherine, last weekend) or being videoed violently pushing a stranger out of my dance space, as I, high on sangria and jaegerbombs leap onto a hay stack as part of my interpretative single ladies dance at Vida festival in Barcelona (Katy, beginning of July). And that is not even mentioning my wedding antics, which were not much more refined despite the evening wear.

2) It is also my birthday in 2 weeks on Wednesday, and this is my prime place to subliminally (or not so subliminally) convince Will to get me a cat. (Ahem). WILL GET ME A CAT. Thanks.

You'll see I am back with an old blogging favourite, a little gratitude list, because it is good for us to count our blessings, don't you know. I try to do these - when I am not taking accidental 3 month blogcations - every other month, looking back at lovely things, looking forward to lovely things etc etc etc. Despite the despondency of that last sentence that is what I will be doing here and I do actually like writing them; how.ev.er: in the interest of making this blog as authentic as possible I wanted to also list some slightly bad, or at least slightly annoying things, as a reminder to me and anyone who reads this, life isn't always instagrammable all the time and that is normal. Like, guys, tbh I'm not always falling in rivers or shoving strangers from my dance space. Sometimes my life is just not that glamorous.

9 nice things | March & April

It is tricky typing this post out today, a) because I massively over predicted how much of a spring day it is, and definitely should not be writing this from the garden armed with an iced (what was I thinking) tea and therefore my hands are going numb making it physically hard to type; and b) because I am not feeling so nice, so writing about nice stuff feels fake and silly and makes this emotionally hard to type. See what I did there.

My crazy irrational panic attacks have definitely made me say no to things and stopped me doing stuff. Sometimes, this can be the right thing to do. Sometimes if I say yes to too much, and rush around too much, all the attempts to be in 2 places at once and not enough time catching up on life admin/sleep/ just doing nothing can mean that too much cortisol (the stress hormone, not as I first thought, a mouthwash brand) pumping around me makes me more likely to feel jittery, and make me more likely to have a panic attack. One of the first things I was told to do when I first started getting help was to just do less. Learn to say no, and put less pressure on myself.

However, sometimes I say no to things because I am scared. Because they take me out of my comfort zone, and make me afraid of being afraid. I always like to tell myself when I say no to something, when I opt out of something that could be fun that it is the former reason and not this one. That I say no because I am looking after myself, I am making my anxiety better, not giving into it and making it worse. Well this weekend I struck out, and there is no way I could argue it was because of the former reason, it was hook line and sinker just me being scared of what might happen in my own head. And I missed out and I let people down and meeurgh.