The Diary of almost Everything

Every single year we do exactly the same thing. We spend months wishing for summer. Then, the moment the thermometer climbs well above thirty degrees, flirts with thirty-eight and finally gives us exactly what we asked for, half the country immediately starts asking for autumn again. And yes, I’ll happily admit that thirty-eight degrees is probably where even I start negotiating with the sun.…

Somewhere over the past year, my body seems to have developed an opinion. Because in my head I’m still somewhere around twenty-five, maybe twenty-eight on days when I remember to pay my bills on time, and I still seem perfectly capable of deciding that this is the ideal year to start strength training, Pilates and, after almost twenty years, tennis again. My body, however, appears to have…

Lately I’ve been thinking about how strange it actually was that my mother almost never came along to things, because as a child it never seemed strange to me at all. It was simply how our family worked and therefore automatically normal, the way children assume every household on earth functions exactly like their own until they get older and suddenly realise other people grew up in completely…

The strange thing is that two weeks of spring holiday barely felt like a holiday at all, and yet two long weekends in a row somehow immediately convinced me that working only three days a week sounds like an excellent lifestyle choice. Last weekend was Holy Thursday. This weekend is Pentecost. And somehow these weekends already felt more like freedom than the actual May holiday did.Maybe because…

Somewhere between Pilates, strength training, and discovering muscles in my glutes that apparently had been emotionally unavailable for years, I recently realised something strange:I wanted to play tennis again.Which honestly feels a little absurd considering the fact that I stopped almost twenty years ago and spent most of that time avoiding tennis courts like they contained unresolved emotional…

One of the stranger parts of adulthood is discovering that a perfectly normal workday can suddenly turn into a low budget crime documentary.Yesterday was fine! The first day back after the holiday, short week ahead, everyone mildly confused about what day it was, but otherwise perfectly normal. This morning, however, one of my colleagues from administration walked into my office asking for the…

Near the end of every holiday, I inevitably start fantasising about early retirement despite being in my thirties, reasonably healthy, and fully aware that this is financially irresponsible behaviour. Not because I hate my job, because I actually like my work very much, but because holidays have an annoying tendency to remind me that life contains many enjoyable things that do not involve…

On the first truly warm day of a holiday, I can spend a surprising amount of time debating whether I should go to the beach, as if the beach is a complicated life decision instead of a twenty-five minute drive.The plan had been clear: Beach. I had even considered going the day before, until I noticed the wind coming from the wrong direction, which, in my mind, immediately translated into sand in…

There is a very specific kind of irony in realising that you are perfectly capable of doing something, fully aware of how it works, confident enough to execute it, and yet somehow never quite getting around to doing it for yourself. Wallpapering falls firmly into that category.At home, I have always been very good at finding people who are willing to help, which sounds generous in theory, but is…

Somewhere around mid-February I made the very reasonable decision to start going to the gym, not for a man, not for a summer plan, not even because I suddenly developed a deep passion for lifting weights, but simply because I felt like it was time to do something for myself that involved a bit more structure and slightly less negotiation. At the time, I remember very clearly stating that I was…

There are certain moments in adult life that don’t announce themselves as significant until you are already standing in the middle of them, slightly confused, holding something that clearly no longer functions the way it used to. In my case, that something was a fridge door. Not the fridge itself, because that would have been too straightforward, but the door, which, after seventeen years of…

I was sitting in a café, halfway through a very good latte and fully committed to minding my own business, when I realised I had accidentally subscribed to the live version of a relationship podcast happening at the table next to me.I wasn’t trying to listen, obviously, but at some point it felt less like eavesdropping and more like… research. It wasn’t the volume of the conversation that caught…

There was a time when birthdays became a little… complicated, not when I was a child, because for me birthdays were simple back then, filled with cake, presents, and the comforting assumption that the day would quietly revolve around you, although I realise that not every child grows up with that same ease or certainty. As I got older, something shifted, and birthdays slowly became attached to…

Somewhere between deciding that Pilates was going to be my new personality and realising that my core muscles were finally starting to show signs of life again, I found myself in a situation I had not entirely planned for, which is how most of my best decisions seem to happen. I had been doing Pilates since December, both mat and reformer, and although I still confidently consider myself a…

For most of my adult life I have worked in education, which means I have spent an impressive number of years surrounded by small humans, school bells, glue sticks, and the mysterious disappearance of pencils that somehow vanish from classrooms faster than socks disappear in washing machines. I started as a teacher and slowly worked my way into school leadership, which sounds far more strategic…

After writing about the myth of “having it all figured out”, a comment mentioned something that stayed with me: the feeling that everyone else must have received the manual for adulthood while we somehow missed our copy.The more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that if such a manual exists, it must contain a very specific chapter. A chapter with a rather appealing title.Something…

At some point in your thirties you start noticing something slightly suspicious about adulthood. When you were younger, it all looked remarkably well organized. Adults seemed calm, competent, and mysteriously informed about everything. They knew how life worked. They walked into rooms with confidence, spoke in complete sentences during meetings, and appeared to understand mortgages, taxes, and…