By Olivia Ross
Dear reader, in seeing these words you have become my most trusted confidante, my priest and my best friend. The dark, velvety curtain has been drawn and I am about to whisper my most secret thoughts to the digital screen between us. Are you ready?
Chronically online from the age of 12 and chasing perfection from the moment I could walk; I’ve never been the type to sit back and let life be. School was for studying, planning for a future I couldn’t predict. Screw the messing about and wasting time on things I wasn’t good at. All I had to do was get good grades, go to uni, and get a job, then life would be perfect, right?
Wrong. My teen years quickly became devoted to books and tests, my life dependent on perfecting whatever my hands touched. Hobbies weren’t worth my time, especially if I wasn’t good at them, and life became a chore. I so badly wanted to be exceptional at everything that I quickly ended up no longer being myself. I was well and truly burnt out.
fast forward a few years down the line and I now look back on this period with a thick wad of regret. Yes, I’m grateful for the work younger me put in, for the present life I constructed for myself, but I’m so acutely aware of the fact that I forgot to have fun and, in doing so, forgot to be young.
I now know life is for trying things, being bad at things, doing it because you love it and doing it because it’s stupid. We can all find joy in those little everyday moments that fervent to-do listers often leave behind. I love those little cups of coffee at the end of a slow jog and baking cakes even if they don’t always rise. I love singing off-key with my friends in the car and reading books as slow as I like. Time away from the worries of work is what I live for, and now more than anything is a necessity to survive.
I’m not saying I’ve forgotten about my job or my admittedly ambitious goals, I’m just saying I’ve remembered I’m a person. A fallible, completely normal person who can’t work 24/7, let alone be perfect. Yes, I’m still learning how to take time for myself, how to fit hobbies into the perpetual 9 to 5, and how to not get burnt out. But with each passing day, I’m also learning to fall in love with life again. And guess what? It can actually be pretty great.
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