Busy being Fadulous!

On my 40th Birthday, I broke the mirror in my bedroom.

I was trying to drag my newly delivered mattress onto our bed and the combination of the size and weight of the thing made it an unwieldy beast which I had little control over.   I had to let it go which caused uproar when it started to tumble into my other furnishings and there it went – the mirror, that had stood in the corner of our bedroom for years now had trembling legs like Bambi’s.  Before I could fight my way over the mattress to rescue it, it came crashing down, breaking into a million pieces, leaving shreds of glass over the floor and something else for me to have to clean up.

Why were you replacing the mattress on your birthday you silly woman, I hear you ask?  Well to start explaining, what you need to know about me first of all is that I’m a woman who spends a lot of time pouring over magazines and self help books.  I’ve done this for years,  I buy magazines and read articles and books on the latest health, wellbeing or lifestyle trends.  So to give you an example, I’ve read hundreds of articles and have several self help books on Mindfulness for instance.   I will then try to be more mindful using the techniques from these resources but in reality what I inevitably end up doing is just making space in my mind for all the things I need to do that day which then defeats the whole object and so eventually I just give up.  Not good!

Fabulous at following the latest fad

I am,  if I may say so myself,  FADULOUS which means I’m fabulous at following the latest fad!   However, I often tire of whatever it is I am fadding with pretty quickly.  I then get huffy for having no sticking power followed by giving myself a good ticking off for being a complete and utter fadulous failure.

When I’ve come to terms with being a fadulous failure and I’ve put whatever I’ve started down and just got settled into a lovely state of being comfortably numb, sat on my arse, streaming episodes of anything on iplayer and idling away the hours on an evening, something will happen to snap me out of this state of oblivion and my eye will start twitching again! 

What is it? I hear you ask, what starts this recurring pattern in me all over again?  Well it’s usually the arrival of the next subscription of whatever latest magazine I’ve ordered of course!  It will drop through the door and I will get all excited and relax by spending time pouring over the contents, I love it, it’s the best hobby!   New fads will be introduced to me and they will look all shiny and glossy on the pages spoken with such sparkle and conviction by the authors who have written them and then the whole cycle will start again, but this time with something different – an article on leaky gut syndrome – I’ve already ordered the ‘Good Gut Guide’ on ebay and now I’m boiling bone broth!  Imbalanced root chakra perhaps? I’ve searched the net, bought the stone and now I’m walking barefoot on the grass.  Yes I actually did all of those things… for a short time.

Balancing those Chakras

I think you get the gist here that I’m easily influenced by the articles that I read and this also extends to being persuaded by ones I stumble across on the internet.  I have a genuine desire to live a healthier life so I’m a sucker for trying anything that these articles are telling me are going to make me feel better, less stressed, less anxious, more sustainable and an overall better person.  However, I’m not what you would call a ‘completer finisher’ so I’m in conflict with myself here.

So why is it that I can’t see things through and why did I soon give up on trying to balance my chakras?  I have the knowledge and advice to do so in the reams of magazines that I have piling up and the internet at my fingertips, so why do I find it so damn difficult to persist with the latest craze? Why does it actually leave me feeling more stressed and anxious?  Does this happen to others?

I don’t earn a huge amount of money but I still want to seek ways to improve my health and wellbeing, only I can’t afford to indulge in that retreat to India to learn Yoga that was being suggested and advertised as a ‘must do’ for example.  For me, even a mini spa break in the UK wouldn’t be on the cards.

So I used to find myself in a tricky position.   I couldn’t stop being enticed by the magazines or stop purchasing the books and trying out what was being plugged because I do have a genuine desire to be more happy and healthy but I would get jaded with the high end, expensive recommendations that were being featured.

All a bit of an effort

Since the pandemic this has started to change, I’ve noticed that the writers are being more inclusive these days, appealing more to a wider (poorer) audience.  So for example there will usually be more realistic options suggested now like – how to create a mini spa on a budget for instance and it will then give you details on how to pimp up a foot bath at home.  And yes, I did this, I went out and bought a washing up bowl just for my feet along with some Epson Salts and I soaked my litter trotters a couple of times in front of the TV.  It was lovely when the water was hot and if I was to prioritise ‘self care’ like the magazines tell us too, I should be doing this regularly but then like with everything else, it soon became a bit of an effort for me and then forgotten about.

A lot of the articles on wellbeing lately will tell us to write a journal or do some form of reflective writing – it’s one of the new fads! So because I’m fadulous this is what I’m attempting to do now and this blog is the start of mine.  I’m  doing this in the hope that it will give me more focus or perspective, perhaps you could call it ‘self coaching’ which is another thing that is cropping up regularly now.  And perhaps it will help me to actually complete some of the things that I start or learn to ditch what is actually a load of unrealistic rubbish for me with no remorse.

The first thing that I discovered when I started writing was to accept first of all that the people who write these articles and books do it for a living and they are experts in whatever they are endorsing because it’s their job and they have time to do it.  I have a nine to five office job so what they are telling me to do can only be achieved when I have some time in between doing everything else, which is like not very much.   With this realization I’m going to seek ways to enjoy being  fadulous but also perhaps find some humour in it too.

Fadulous together!

So going back to my 40th and the broken mirror.  We are told on TV and in magazines that you should change your mattress every 8 years, and we’d had ours for 11 so it had been preying on my mind.  That’s 11 years of dust mites and dead skin they say which is not seen as respectable even though I’d not experienced any adverse effects from it, although we had masked it with a topper for some of those years!  So I felt compelled to replace it because that’s what advertising does to you, you are told that it will improve your life in some way shape or form.

So I shopped locally for this mattress and because I bought a carpet at the same time, I got a discount on it so I felt pretty chuffed with that, however little did I know that in buying the bloody mattress, I would break my sodding mirror, bringing myself 7 years bad luck on my 40th birthday!

So this is me, I don’t think I’m going to stop being influenced by the media and I’m still going to keep trying out what we are being told to do that is within my reach. But I will also write honestly about if it is realistic for someone like me to follow it through, does it really work on a budget and find out if it really does make us more healthy, less stressed and less anxious.

I’m sure that I’m not the only one like this, so if you are fadulous like me or want to hear more about my fadulous escapades, come and join me – we can be fadulous together!

Welcome aboard!