I didn’t see these things coming
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Life is full of surprises. In fact, the entire last decade of mine seems to have been one long round of random curveballs and various shocks to my belief system.
As a young person, I could never have imagined that self-employment would be the right thing for me. I would never have thought that I would say “yes” to going to a Rammstein concert and wearing Birkenstocks, and “meh” to getting married. But that’s how it’s happened.
I’d love to sit down with my 20-year-old self over a drink or two and let her in on some of the surprises that adulting has brought. These ones would certainly have had Little Miss Katharine choking on her Cosmopolitan in disbelief…
1. Walking as a form of exercise
When I was younger, walking did not count as exercise. “Exercise” and “sport” were strictly limited in their definition to those things which made me SWEAT; which made my heart beat so hard that I could hear the blood thumping in my ears.
Walking? That was the thing I did to get from A to B when I had to carry stuff and didn’t want to get all lathered up on the way. It was a means to an end. It was transport. It did not qualify as exercise.
How times change
These days, walking is my thing! Gone is the “push-it-to-the-limit” mentality. I don’t like dripping with sweat anymore if I can possibly help it. Walking is also far lower impact and therefore more sustainable – which is something you do start to think about more when you hit your 40s and body parts start to ache.
That’s not to say I don’t challenge myself with walking. I climb mountains and participate in ultra-walks of 40km or more with the International Marching League. Be in no doubt: these things are every bit as tiring and challenging as a full marathon!
But walking is slower and more laid back and The Other Half will happily join me – and that’s what I’m looking for these days.
2. I like naps
I never used to nap. I used to be so full of beans that daytime naps were as good as a guarantee that I would not sleep at night.
Naps were for babies and for the elderly. Naps were not for me.
Well, I’ve changed my mind. Not that I spend hours of the day crashed out on the bed (I’ve got too much to do), but 20-30 mins of shut-eye in the afternoon helps to power me through the afternoon and maintain productivity. And it’s part of the glory of the weekend to get under the covers and get cosy for a while in the afternoon – preferably with The Other Half, who is also an enthusiastic napper (or a “gangsta napper” as he calls himself).
Yes, I like naps. And I even have a nightshirt with that written across the front, just to underscore my commitment to the enterprise.
3. Lego lover
We millennials have managed to acquire a reputation for being the generation who have failed to fully grow up and take responsibility. And there’s more than a grain of truth in that accusation.
As an elder millennial, I’d like to think that I’ve sidestepped some of the worst traits of my fellow generational travellers. But I’m here to tell you that I’ve recently made quite a large concession to Millennialism.
After scoffing for years about childless millennials buying themselves kid’s toys for their own entertainment, I found myself doing exactly that.
A new project
The Other Half has loved Lego since he was small and has been consistently delighted at how the models have developed since his childhood (he’s a millennial too). The pandemic gave him ample excuse to treat himself to a couple of Lego projects to while away those long lockdown evenings. I watched on with interest as he built a truck, the Statue of Liberty, an airplane. It looked impressive and absorbed him completely.
Then the lockdown ended and we went back to our normal, Lego-free lives. Until the next Christmas when TOH decided he wanted to do another project and invited me to do one too. I was in the mood for something new, so I said yes and chose a beautiful autumnal flower bouquet.
I’m a convert
So much fun. We’d sit down together in the evenings and complete a few stages of our respective projects – and feel far more fulfilled and contented afterwards than if we’d spent the time watching TV or ignoring each other while scrolling on our phones.
These Lego models are so well-made and thought-through, a real joy to build. And so easy to pass on when you’re done: after leaving them on display to admire for a while, we dismantle them and sell them on the sizeable secondhand market for Lego on eBay.
Our Lego projects are now an annual pre-Christmas ritual and I do not feel in the least bit ashamed to admit it.
4. Women are often their own worst enemies
I grew up in the age of “girl boss” feminism. Which is apparently now looked down upon by GenZ as “Peak Millennial Cringe”, but millennials were marinated in this ideology before we knew anything about life, so don’t go too hard on us, OK kids?
Girl boss feminism demanded that we girls climbed that corporate ladder, wearing our high heels and sharp suits, making our voices heard at every opportunity and breaking balls right left and centre. We had to look tough and be tough – none of this vulnerability and authenticity stuff that GenZ goes so nuts over. Millennial ladies grew up believing that emotions had to be hidden if you wanted to be taken seriously and get on in life. Added to which I’m British, so I had that stiff-upper-lip culture weighing on me too. My upbringing was suffused with the philosophy of “just getting on with it”.
And I’m not going to rubbish this at all, because that culture of toughness has resulted in me now being surrounded by really competent, successful millennial women who have gone out into the world and done great things. Things that their mothers couldn’t have done because women’s lib hadn’t properly happened yet.
Silly women everywhere
When we were growing up, women’s ascendancy in the business world was seen as such an unquestionable good that it seemed fair to at least partially lift the general requirement in life not to be a d*ck to ease their way.
However, during my 2+ decades in professional life, I’ve stopped accepting this. I’ve come across too many women behaving foolishly and conveniently blaming their own failures on the patriarchy or other such vague notion – almost always left unexplained and unjustified.
Where before I was lenient on these silly women in the belief that they were being judged more harshly for their behaviour than men, I’ve now become more demanding in a way which would probably shock my younger self.
Kamala Harris, AOC, Meghan Markle – these are the kind of Women Behaving Daftly who I look at with disdain and feel secondhand embarrassment for. I watch them in horror as they throw the female cause back a notch (or seven) by being total planks and then attempting to lay the blame for their losses at the door of sexism, racism, capitalism etc.
Ladies, the problem isn’t any of your “-isms”; the problem is YOU. The brutal truth is that you just aren’t coming up with the goods.
5. Marriage? Meh
As I wrote here, when I was a kid, I always imagined that I would settle down and get married one day. It never occurred to me that, when I met the right one, I would look at marriage and go “hmm, no – I’m just not feeling it”.
But so it is. And the Other Half feels the same. If, as an unmarried couple, we enjoyed the same rights and benefits as spouses, we’d gladly skip the whole thing. But the fact is that, where we live, some rights which are very important for our later lives only accrue to married couples.
So we’re finally taking the plunge and getting hitched. Which promptly threw us headfirst into a bureaucratic battle with no less than three European countries to get the required documents together.
I’m sure I’ll be happy on the day and that I’ve done it. But right now, the marriage process is just a dry, frustrating and thoroughly un-romantic slog. The Other Half hit the nail right on the head when he said: “It’s a bit like going to a really nice restaurant, but you have to have a colonoscopy to get in.”
Amen to that.
6. Cleaning the kitchen
I often see those breakdowns of the average human life into how much (or little) time we spend sleeping, in the office, eating, with our partners etc.
If you made the typical division of my time into a pie chart, you would surely see that a fat chunk of my one and only wild and precious life would be assigned to “kitchen cleaning”. Glam!
I never imagined that this would eat into my adult life as much as it does. Admittedly, The Other Half and I work at home and cook twice a day, meaning that our kitchen is subject to much heavier use than those of other couples who spend weekdays in the office and eat out.
But I do sometimes feel that life is what happens between bouts of cleaning up the kitchen after a meal. I seem to be at it all the time.
7. Rail travel? I’m here for it!
I think I travelled by train a total of 10 times in my first 16 years. I grew up in a tiny village in Yorkshire where there was only one or two buses a week to the next bigger town. Here, the car was king and the only true means of mobility. Rail travel was not a part of this idyllic, rural world.
Then I moved to the city, swapping out the individual mobility of the car for public transport. I don’t want to know how many hours I’ve spent on the subway systems of London, Munich and Vienna in the last 25 years!
These days, I’m a firm convert to rail travel, especially when I have to cover longer distances. I’m incredibly lucky to live in a country with an excellent rail system (God bless Austrian Federal Rail, it is the BEST), surrounded by other countries whose trains have continually improved (Germany excluded).
With good discounts and even better all-in options like the Austrian Klimaticket and the classic Interrail deals – rail travel in Europe has never been easier or more attractive, and I am here for it.
8. School grades and certificates don’t matter
It is quite likely that the trajectory of my life would have been different had I realised this early on. Or maybe I would have done the same stuff – but enjoyed my life a hell of a lot more instead of stressing endlessly about marks on a piece of paper.
When I was young, school and university grades were all I cared about. My self-worth was dependent on them. If they were the best they could be, life was great. If they fell below the standards I had set for myself, I hated myself – even if I’d still done great. Nothing less than perfection would do, you see. And terrible things would surely happen if I failed to meet my own tough demands.
As an adult, I’ve come to understand how little those letters and numbers matter in the great scheme of things. They were simply the codes, the keys which allowed me to move onto the next rungs of the ladder in life and got me where I wanted to be. No more, no less.
Unprepared for the real world
Only a very small percentage of what I learned at school has proven useful or necessary in my later life. And the strong memory which proved such a boon in formal education when learning by heart was writ large proved not to be such a winning asset out in the real world.
You see, in this adult, working world, you don’t need a strong memory so much as the ability to quickly understand systems and situations, identify risks and opportunities, sort the relevant information from the dross and generate practical solutions.
The skills that got me all of those coveted grades and certificates just didn’t cut the mustard when I actually had to get stuff done and I found myself having to develop a whole new set of skills on the fly.
Today, I’m still proud of my straight-A school grades and my elite university degree certificates – but they rarely see the light of day. They sit in my folder of key documents, slowly gathering dust and the occasional spider. Their importance has long since withered away.
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Related articles:
Girl boss feminism – what did it ever do for me?
Building a new career in your 40s…this much I know
My 40th birthday – 40 thoughts upon reaching a big milestone
Megyn Kelly – why she should be every girl’s role model
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