Congratulations Laura, You're a grown up now

So here I am 31 and for the first time in at least 10 years I am not waking to the lurching sensation of a hangover. Its almost an inevitability to be hungover when your birthday is the day after St Paddies day. I'm lying in bed awake and trying to shake that groggy feeling so I can go workout ( 100 burpees for time followed by 100 alt v-ups) and that should get me started for the day and ready for work. It's the first year I haven't had some expectation of what my birthday should be like and it means I wont be left with the gnawing sense of disappointment as the day draws to a close and that's when I realized it's official I'm a grown up now only 10 years later than I expected to feel this way.

Now all I need to do is workout where I need to go to collect my prize and I'll be on my way. I think it's about time I stopped feeling like an overgrown teenager and not getting hammered for my birthday is all part of that. I don't think it should be taken into consideration that I'm still off drink until Easter or that working later on today is what prevented me going out because in reality I'm glad to have missed St Patrick's day. I had a day off and I spent it at home and didn't see so much as a single shamrock and you know what It was great. I got loads of things done (like making soup and coconut slices and sorting all my stuff so I can go to Clonmel straight after work) and I felt really relaxed and I was able to admit to myself that I've never really enjoyed the sort of day time drinking this so called festival inspires. I'm pretty sure a welsh man coming to Ireland 100's of years ago to spread the message of Christianity isn't really a reason to be so drunk you can't walk straight by 6 pm and yet so many people see it as a chance to do just that. I could never sustain it so I'd either start feeling too drunk very early on or I'd drink myself sober but either way it didn't make for a good night. and now that I'm taking a break from drink I can admit that the vicious nature of my hangovers is probably some indication that I'm just not meant to drink at all.
Here am some things that  show I'm a grown up.

1) I drive my own little car ( a very battered but grown up little car) and you don't see kids driving now do you?
2) I only dress up for work. see I'm only dressed as a princess/witch/elf as its part of my job. My nieces dress up all the time for fun and that's completely different.
3) I only read grown up books. Have you ever read literary fiction? if you have you'd remark on how grown up it is. The teenage books I read are for work, for work I tell you ! and the picture books I read as they come in well clearly that's for work too, I'm a grown up now.
4) I rent my own place all by myself and pay all my own bills. The part of being grown up that no one really tells you to get excited about when you're 15.
5) I am starting to make choices about my diet and life style that only a grown up would make. (eating fish and giving up chocolate- so grown up)

There are still some areas where I need some work as someone clearly forgot to inform my brain I'm an adult now and I should....
1) Not get so excited about Christmas (and then inevitably disappointed because you never recreate the feeling you had about Christmas as a child)
2) Not get all awkward and shy whenever I have to talk to a man I like ( someone please tell my brain I'm not 15 now)
3) Not go around exclaiming loudly about the injustice of having to work on my birthday , my birthday of all days ( as though it were a National holiday)
4) Not think a nap is the perfect way to finish an afternoon at home ( haven't had one in a while now)
5) Not enjoy the picture books quite so much
6) not relate to a lot of those teenage books as though I was in the right age bracket to be reading them
7)And Not spend this long in bed updating my blog so I dont have to get up and do burpees :)


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sometimes I open my mouth and my mother comes out ..

Image
I have been told on more than one occasion that I'm sarcastic. Often that I'm too sarcastic (as though there could be such a thing) and I have retort up my sleeve for such occasions which is if you think I'm sarcastic you should meet my mother. No, really you should because my sarcasm is but a pale imitation of hers. Every so often though I come out without something that makes my friends or other family members pause because sometimes when I open my mouth, my mother comes out.  It's funny how people always take the words you are turning into your mother as such an insult because the reality of the matter is it's a both a good and bad thing. Obviously there are certain qualities I am perfectly happy to emulate and others not so much and on the whole I am not entirely sure how much control I have over it. It's not quite a pick and mix counter here. I think there are some habits you are not even aware you have picked up until someone else kindly points it out....
Read more

How long does it take to learn to drive?

Image
I remember my nieces a year or so back asking me in an incredulous tone how long it takes to learn to drive because for as long as they could remember I had L plates on my car. The answer in my case is four years. Admittedly I probably could have gotten my full licence sooner if I hadn't been so hesitant to do my test in the three years that have passed since my last attempt. I get very anxious during tests or Interviews and so do not perform particularly well at either. I will put that in my list of things I need to work on in the new year. In time since I have learned to drive I feel I have accomplished a lot and yet I will go out of my way to avoid having to parallel park because I feel like its always going to be my Achilles heel. At least I have come a long way from the days when I used to feel anxious about getting into my car and was likely to bunny hop across roundabouts in third gear. The problem with learning to drive is that the older you do the harder it is and...
Read more

Burnout: the sequel

Image
  I am burnt out. Hardly the most shocking declaration given I have been saying it out loud for a while now but here we are. This isn't my first run in with burn out nor will it likely be my last. Not only am I working in a stressful job, a social care worker in residential care, which is no stranger to burn out but also I am autistic so its like I know a secret short cut to getting there. I think as bragging goes this is up there with declaring how many times I have managed to catch covid. Which is 4 at my current count and they say there are no benefits to working in Health care. If you are lucky enough to not have experienced burnout then I can tell you its not an experience I would recommend to a friend. If you have friends working in social care then you probably wont need to.  Some of the things I have been experiencing are random bouts of crying. Given high sensitivity is part of my autism profile, I am no stranger to crying and the first time I experienced burnout it t...
Read more