CW48: writing from my bed
"You grow wherever you’re planted"
30.11.2024
When you’ll be reading this, I’ll be at a TedX centred around “women”, which I’m equally excited and worried about. It has been a long journey, finding things that stimulate me in this city, and all (judging from the brochure) the conferences sound more feminist than just “for and about women”. That being said, I always go into any experience with low expectations. I am hoping to be wowed.
Today was a splending sunny Saturday, I explored the city centre and tested the public transportation system.
All in all, I am still missing parts of my old life but I am grateful for where I landed. Perhaps that is what being an adult means: living with your regrets, accepting the “what-ifs”.
THE OUTFITS
Day 1: International Day against Violence on women.
A conversation with a friend (hi Lily) made me once again reflect on the male leads we write in our romcoms, which I am a huge fan of. I love the classics, and I voraciously read any new Emily Henry novel that gets published.
Our age is, however, lacking in the department of iconic romcoms. I know a lot of it has to do with the fractured media landscape (none of us are watching the same thing, nothing ever has the time to become timeless).
Some of it, though, I trace back to a crisis of culture: we are constantly attempting to move away from heteronormative roles within the couple, but these are the basis upon which traditional romcoms are built. It seems that this tension creates the Ali Hazelwood type of romantic novel, where we want to believe the female heroine to be a feminist queen, despite the male lead being a most likely possessive and hyper-masculine man. Perhaps the recent release of MILF romcoms derives from the inability to resolve this tension: the older woman, who has been wronged by an old-school romantic relationship, can seek comfort in younger “more feminist” men, who have allegedly grown up with a different sensibility.
Day 2: I had to train a new girl in my team, because she will be covering some of my tasks over winter break. This young woman is exactly my age and has less experience than me, yet I can’t help but feel like I’m in competition with her: expressing her ideas and opinions out louds seems to come more naturally to her, whilst that is something I still struggle with 4 years into the corporate world. I think that is why I found myself micromanaging her, wanting to never speak to her again - insecurity.
Day 3: my manager and I had our one to one and she asked me if (in the far future) I would ever be interested in being sent to one of our international offices and I had to really think about it.
I know I am so young and I have so much time to explore and live my life to the fullest, but I want to settle, I want to find my home, my destination. I have already had so many first days, I just want to be known, to feel comfortable.
Sometimes I fear I am wasting my youth, but as my friend Harry Burns from When Harry Met Sally once said: "I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.".
To be clear, that somebody isn’t necessarily my partner (though it is him too). It’s the version of me I want to become, the goals I have, the way I am picturing my future.
Day 4: my friend had a flat warming party at his flat and I got drunk on red wine (on a school night, shocker). I have such a strange relationship with alcohol: I started drinking very young and have been sober on and off since I was 18.
I was thinking about this this morning, preparing for the newsletter, and I realised that - perhaps - the reasons why children shouldn’t drink are not just health-related. When I started getting drunk, I had no tools to understand self-control and I did not want to deal with my anxiety/negative emotions. I developed a habit of getting plastered to gain control of my thoughts, which obviously did not work in the long-run.
I have grown used to being sober, slipping every now and again, but recently I have been trying to figure out if there’s another way to enjoy a glass of wine and a red-cheeked giggle without expecting my reality to crumble around me.
Day 5: I forgot to take a picture, but this was the look I was sporting when I drove myself to my first pole dancing class. Here’s a list of what I was worried about:
What if I get lost driving there? (I did get lost)
What if there’s no parking? (The gym had a parking lot)
What if I can’t even utter one word and people think I am weird? (I chatted, I was normal)
What if I am the fattest in the room? (I was, indeed, the fattest in the room).
None of my worries mattered in the end, neither the unfounded ones nor the ones that ended up being true. Throughout the 60 minute workout I kept surprising myself, I kept doing things I did not believe my body to be capable of, and - most importantly - I had so much fun!!!!!
BONUS
Here’s some longer essays that discuss a couple of the topics mentioned here:
Reflection #4: what is love (on the power of media in framing love)
Reflection #13: the era of nostalgia (on the fractured media landscape)
Love your outfits! I'm glad you had fun! Sometimes it's good to let loose! Have you seen the romcom tv show "Nobody Wants This"? Lots of discussion about their modern relationship, which I loved to see!