How I Really Spend A Weekday (and how I suspect you do too)

As I grow older the number of secret, dirty little habits I clock up seem to grow greater. And I’m not talking about secret, dirty little habits in a sexy way. No, I’m talking about secret, dirty little habits like putting a teaspoon of Bisto in my gravy when no one is looking and I’m cooking the Sunday roast sort of way. In a world where everyone I follow on Instagram is posting glamorous looking #nomakeupselfies, half the Mums at Ava's school gates are showing up in their gym gear boasting washboard stomachs and clutching homemade hemp smoothies and I spend my days constantly worrying that I am literally one chip in my nail polish off a nervous breakdown - I keep finding myself looking around wondering if everyone else is struggling to keep it together as much as I am. Or if it's just that some people are simply better at hiding it than others?

Does the fact that I don’t eat Acai Bowls for breakfast, meditate over crystals for their healing power or make my own hummus make me any less of a person?

Or does it just make me more honest?

I recently read a feature in one of those over-priced, glossy magazines I adore (that I know objectify women just as much as the mens ones do and enforce a damaging portrait of ‘beauty’ that Ava’s generation will have to pay for) - on what a popular writer, broadcaster and television presenter did in a week. I lap that stuff up let me tell you. I take no greater pleasure in life than salaciously soaking up how celebrities spend their Sundays, what’s really in their wardrobes and what’s generally kicking about their fridges. And this particular celeb documented her days for an entire week. And there were a lot of burpees. And smoothies. And oh so much self-care. 

It kinda made me want to take to my bed for a week in my massive over-sized Frankie Says Relax t-shirt with a bottle of tequila. It kinda made me want to ask myself a lot of hard questions. Was I happy? Did I really need to plank before bedtime to fulfil a full & meaningful existence?  So I decided to do my own exceedingly honest, completely derisive and massively cynical one day version. 

And let you decide.

A Monday (about five weeks ago)

Alarm goes off at 7am and I snooze until 7.20, despite reading an article about how hitting snooze was giving us all cancer (or something to that effect) and promising myself the day before that I was going to start getting up every morning exactly when it goes off and using the extra time to meditate. Switch the radio over from Radio 2 to either BBC Scotland or Radio 4 (a Monday morning ritual) and try to pay attention to what's happening in the world instead of thinking about how I am going to get the felt tip pen out of the dining table. After showering, I do my make up then throw on a slightly old but extremely comfy sweater and black trousers with flat pumps because I have no appointments that day and when I have no appointments I tend to go to the office looking like a homeless person. Leave for work at 7.50am, pick up milk en route & listen to Law of Attraction podcasts on the drive there.  Get to work and chastise the fact that despite some very committed straightening, my hair has taken on a really weird flyaway texture and isn't sitting properly. Also chastise myself for my completely inappropriate footwear as I see the rain start to cascade down the windows (I’m never in appropriate footwear).  Keep going to message back the guy I started chatting to on Bumble last night but I'm so busy I get half way through the message and then have to put my phone down. Eventually get back to him at about 11.22 with some inane mindless nonsense because until I've met someone and know I could actually see myself exchanging bodily fluids with them, my heart is never really in it. Nip out of the office briefly to drive my boss to the car garage to pick up his car while reassuring him I absolutely know the way back to the office. Get lost on the way back to the office. Haven't brought my handbag so don't have my phone in order to plug in the sat nav. Eventually make it back to the office about 30 minutes later than I should with wet feet from walking from the car to the main door in my inappropriate footwear. Skip my lunch break because I am still suffering the after affects of eating a disgusting amount of Greek then Chinese food and imbibing too much Malbec over the weekend. Spend the day blasting out my own music in the office and not consulting anyone else on what they may or may not want to hear. I have a new assistant who is young and gorgeous and keeps suggesting all these cool bands for me to listen to. Appreciate she's here to keep me relevant. Continue to try and convince myself that because I am using one of those silly water bottles now that you stick fruit into the middle of, drinking two litres of H2O per day is actually ridiculously easy. It's not. It's an absolute pain in the arse having to pee every single hour. Especially when the girls toilets at work are colder that Volstok Station. Work late and alone in the office until around 7pm as I am picking my sister and her boyfriend up from the airport post them holidaying in LA. Take an immense amount of pleasure in her messaging me from Heathrow to let me know that she threw up all over her brand new white Converse on the plane. Swear a lot and then use the time to fix my make up at my desk when my Mac freezes completely. Swear even more when I end up having to switch the thing off at source and lose a 600 word blog post I was writing for a client. Promise myself that I will start utilising Google Documents more. Take a beta blocker because I drank way more caffeine than my usual daily quota and can feel my anxiety start to kick in as a consequence. Leave work and head to the airport to pick my sister up whereupon I lie about how amazing the weather has been in Glasgow. Finally get home about 8.30pm and pretend  not so see the gym gear I  strategically laid out on my bed that morning in order to guilt trip my post work self into going for a run. Get straight into my pyjamas. Also ignore the fresh and nutritious ingredients I bought at the weekend in order to make an amazing vegan health dish for #MeatfreeMonday and frantically try and defrost some bolognese from the back of the freezer on the radiator whilst eying up the leftover Malbec. Eat dinner alone in front of something inane on telly whilst inwardly chastising myself (are you noticing a theme here) for the fact that I should really be on a date as Mondays are one of my limited Ava free evenings. Drink a chamomile tea while painting my nails as part of a recent cost saving exercise which includes no longer paying for a monthly gel manicure or for someone else to clean the inside of my car. Put a wash on, even though I know I will go to bed later and forget to hang it up. Give in and pour myself the last dregs of the Malbec and stick on an episode of Outlander. Head to the bathroom at around 10pm and attempt to brush my teeth with the new (apparently life changing) whitening charcoal powder my sister gave me that everyone is raving about. Proceed to get black charcoal powder over everything in the bathroom. Including me. Throw offending charcoal powder in the bin and concede to go back to the Colgate. Go to bed looking like I work down the mines. Read approximately three pages of the Ernest Hemingway I ordered from Amazon before giving up and reaching for this weeks copy of Closer magazine (which I hide underneath aforementioned overpriced but much more glamorous glossies). Get annoyed upon noticing that my nails are chipped already and make a mental note to book a nail appointment in the morning. Switch the light out at 11pm then remember I have a wet load of washing still to hang up just at the moment I'm drifting off to sleep. Finally fall asleep making unsubstantiated promises to myself that I will get up early and meditate in the morning.

And there was you lot thinking I ran 10k every morning, only reads books by the Dalai Lama and existed on decaf oat milk lattes.