I don’t know about you but every time February comes round I am incredibly bored of winter. It’s one of those “meh” months. There are no particularly exciting holidays or events (I don’t count Valentines Day as an important enough or exciting enough holiday, sorry! Pancake Day on the other hand, I can get on board with…) and the weather is never exciting either. We are all fed up of the cold and find ourselves pining for the spring that is oh so reluctant to make an appearance.

February for me is a month that, in more recent years, I kind of dread, not just for it’s unexciting weather or for it’s annual forced display of love (we should show our love for one another everyday, but this is a rant for a different post…) the main thing I dread is that it’s my birthday month.

I know, I know, there are probably plenty of you now shaking your heads or maybe just mentally tutting at your screens at what a grumpy old sod I am but as I’ve gotten older my birthday has gotten less and less exciting, I think it’s something we all experience as we get older. It’s the same feeling you get when Christmas comes round each year. When I was young the 5am wake ups were the best, where as now I’m grateful to get a few extra hours in bed (and maybe a few more wines in the blood stream). Now don’t get me wrong, I always end up having an amazing birthday, with my family and friends making it memorable every year but I think as I’m hitting my mid-twenties (GULP!) with every February that passes it just terrifies me how quickly the time flies.

This year I turned 24. I feel like it’s an age that, like my birthday month, is a bit “meh”. It’s neither here nor there in it’s importance. It’s certainly no milestone as 21 or 30 is, but it does feel like the start of proper, scary, full blown adulthood and there is no turning back. This was my first birthday since graduating and I think that has just added to my feelings  of dread and mild terror at how scarily quick adulthood has come and hit me in the face. I have hit the age where the hangovers are getting more and more vicious (since when did I get a hideous hangover from 2, yes 2, glasses of wine…?!), I can no longer get away with eating all the food and forgetting about the repercussions (well hello there spare tire…) and I no longer get asked for my ID when buying a tipple (there was only so long these dimples of mine could mask my true vintage).

I can remember being a teenager and longing for my twenties to strike. I used to cross off the birthdays and get more and more excited in the passing years and the impending adulthood. But I think it’s only as my twenties are ticking by that the voices of parents, grandparents or people that were older than I was, those comments that used to annoy me so much as a teenager, are actually starting to make sense. The wise words of the older generations telling me to slow down and appreciate my younger years have finally started ringing true. I’ve spent a good chunk of my younger years kind of wishing them away but now I’m witnessing all of my friends getting married, buying houses and having children and I’m sat here slightly terrified. Since when was my baby brother turning 18 and heading to Uni and my big sister having two beautiful children and getting married?!

Basically I feel like I’m in a bit of a weird time in my life. People around me are either sinking their teeth into meaty adulthood (I’m not sure if that sentence will read as well as it sounded in my head…) or they are clinging on to their twenties and living their lives free and easy (I wish I could handle my drink as well as I used to… *SIGHS*). I am in the nether zone of adulthood but I must remember to look to the positives. I’m still young (-ish… *weeps internally*), I’ve got an amazing family, I live in a pretty awesome city working a pretty awesome job (I’ll write a post about it one day I promise…) and I must remember what I have achieved in those years that I thought I’d let slip through my fingers. I must remember to seize the day and not let the big things weigh me down.      Eat that cake, buy those shoes and go for that drink, even when you know you have work the next day and you will probably regret it…

This post is a bit of brain fart and I’m not really sure if it actually makes any sense or not… Let me know in the comments below…

Thanks for reading,

Molly Catherine

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