I’m at a stage in my life where I have high thread count sheets, but also have a bottle of Trevi chilling in the fridge.

 

It’s a transitional period. I’m finding myself, yet I am building my career. This means I get to be a hot mess*, but also have expensive towels. It’s an interesting time in a female person’s life, which is probably why it’s often fodder for television series. There are so many hijinks to be had – will she date someone obsessed with public fornication? Will she have a career crisis that can only repaired by an honest but humorous monologue about convenient experience she had that week? Will she finally fall in love with the hopelessly attractive but vaguely detestable man introduced to the show in the first episode?

 

Again, this all comes down to my hallucination that my life is a television series. Unfortunately, it’s not – well not yet, but hopefully somebody from Hulu will stumble across my little blog and realise the deluded musings of an everyday Australian girl are exactly what modern television is missing. I lead an everyday life with no apparent narrative arc other than my continued existence – and considering my Saturday night involves just me, my laptop and a comfy oversized jumper, I would say that narrative arc bears a closer resemblance to a flatlining heart monitor.

 

Because my life is an actual life and not an idealised representation of what a roomful of writers thinks the existence of middle class woman should be, there is no underlying theme of my experiences. What happens to me everyday has nothing to do with, for example, modern relationships or the empowerment of women or even power struggles within elite law firms.

 

Now that that’s cleared up, back to the amusing juxtapositions of my life.

 

I’m at a stage where there are a lot of age appropriate douple-ups. Where I’m at now is essentially the vaginal-opening-shaped portion of a Venn diagram where the circle of Young Adult and Responsible Adult overlap. Call me Malcolm, because I’m in the middle.

Clearly I should have put “legitimate-looking handwriting” in the Responsible Adult circle. 

 

But unlike childhood when being in the middle meant you were the overlooked Jan, being in the middle as an “adult” means you have a bit of power. It means you get to be chosey, and pick at aspects of your age like the Sizzler salad bar. Sometimes, what you pick up with the standardised tongs is delicious, other times it can be laced with poison because of a disgruntled worker. That’s life.

 

So I get to choose a few dishes from the Responsible Adult bar – having a business card, regular pap smears, sometimes wearing work-appropriate heels to the office. But because of my mid-twenties status, I’m also able to load my plate up with Young Adult treats such as double fisting free champagne and wearing a long shirt as a dress even though bending shows off my undies.

 

Unfortunately this mid-status equates to only paying for the salad bar option at the counter, which means there are some things you miss out on. Sure, you’re able to access all the potato skins you want but when the waiter drops off the steak someone ordered at your table, you can’t help but wish you had committed to a main meal of your own.

 

Now, let me stop you right there. I remind you that my life isn’t yet a popular television series about a successful, adorably eccentric lass looking for a life partner. And I’m in no way equating a life partner to a well-cooked hunk of steak. I’m not yearning for piece of steak of my own, daydreaming about a slab of meat I can pour gravy over – although now I am wondering if anyone has ever done that as a way to spice things up. What I am saying is that, should you be expected to join someone else’s table, it would be nice to be able to refer to that steak and tell them “I can’t, I’m already full”.

 

That’s right. I’m taking about excuses no one questions which only applies to couples. Say what you will about committed relationships, they always offer an out for just about anything. Got a dull social obligation that wouldn’t be worth the smears of foundation required to look presentable for? Your life partner has a sporting thing they need your support for. Asked to sign up for an optional work training day over a weekend? Romantic interest is getting their wisdom teeth out and need you wipe away their drool. Facing a sweaty, unpleasant extended family Christmas dinner you would rather catch headlice than attend? Significant other has already told their family you’re spending the holiday with them. Relationships give you the obligation-cancelling power of claiming a case of diarrhoea of biblical proportions, while pining the disgust on someone else. You’re able to lie about deaths, but because you’re getting out of something due to the fictional heart attack of your partner’s stepdad’s mother you don’t have to worry about jinxing your own family members. It’s an ultimate free pass of excuses, and I don’t like not having that for myself. What I need is someone who I can blame for not being able to do stuff I don’t want to do without being obliged to do stuff I don’t want to do.   Because unfortunately, sometimes having a piece of steak is the only thing that can excuse you from doing something you just don’t feel like. You may already have a lot on your plate, but the potato skins you gorged yourself on from the Young Adult bar isn’t accepted as filling. People assume that not only can you fit more in, but you’re actually hungry for something more. Two soup bowls of pasta, several helpings of cheesy bread and a token effort at the salads will never be seen as as substantial as a steak dinner. You could have three carefully curated pre-dinner desserts (one which isapple crumble centred, one chocolate overload and the other purely ice cream based) and people would still think you’re compensating for a steak no matter how creative each bowl was. Unfortunately, that’s the world we still live in: a world in which potato skins aren’t good enough.

 

And, just so we’re clear, I’m talking about metaphorical potato skins. Literal potato skins will fill every bastard up.

 

 

*So I didn’t realise that hot mess was an all-bad thing. I used to think it was some kind of super sexy former child star who has a shitty car, is sexually irresponsible and can hold her piss like a team of reserve-grade rugby league players – they care less about their on-field performance and have an inferiority complex on account of not being good enough for A grade so these guys know how to party – all while having an unexplainably banging rig and somehow kills it at their job. When someone says “hot mess” I think of Amy Schumer’s character in Trainwreck before the conventions of romantic comedies forced her to turn her life around and submit to the whims of a man and the ideals of society. So I used to like to refer to myself as one of these people until I found out that “hot mess” is essentially the human equivalent of a wheelie bin in the hot summer sun on the first bin day of the year – yeah, Christmas AND New Years, which means prawn heads, beer-soaked paper towels and those devilled eggs the neighbours insist on giving you which were leftover from the party you took them to as your contribution to the nibblies. That stinks guys. Apparently “hot mess” is someone with a shitty car, sexually irresponsible, drinks a lot and looks like death whose boss is searching for excuses to fire them without being open to a Fair Work prosecution.