Some people know how to…

…make life easier for themselves. I am not one of those. Don’t get me wrong I am not unhappy. It’s just that I sometimes make life harder than it should be.

Last night, for example, having forgotten to have dinner but remembered to have two pints, I came home about midnight. Work has been so busy of late that I didn’t even have bread and cheese at home. So, I stopped at the petrol station - the only shop open that late - for a loaf – white slices of cardboard basically. Had a couple of slices with peanut butter and honey.

As I had this Michelin star worthy dinner, I exchanged some emails with one of the people I’d just been out with. She was up checking her emails and eating the dinner her husband had saved for her. When I told her I needed to go food shopping, her response was ‘you do not need shopping, just get a husband and three kids. It is working fine for me’….

You see, I can say ‘bitch!’. I don’t have a husband or three kids – though now I have food. And being 35.5, I am aware it’s becoming a bit late for husband and kids – for three of them anyway.

But I see it differently. She is one of those people who make life easy for themselves. I, on the other hand, have this obsession of doing everything myself. My only teenage dream was to have my own flat, live alone and be free. That I have – possibly at a cost of periodic loneliness. I don’t have a cleaner not because I can’t afford one but it’s a small flat and I think it should be my duty to clean it. Examples are endless but perhaps too personal and hence boring.

Anyway, I succeed at most things I attempt but I work hard and am tired. Until recently I used to think that’s what you do: you work hard to succeed. You ‘buy the flowers yourself’ as Mrs Dalloway says…But now I am thinking there must be an easier way. There must be a way of getting more people to do more things for me; a way to be a bit more selfish without a guilty conscious. But how?

I’ve read about the ‘One Life’ exhibition in London Olympia (www.onelifelive.co.uk) 3-5 March. I am going to visit it and report back. I am not after a tangible life change like a new house, city, job etc. but a more subtle one. All I want is to have enough good food at home at all times, even if there are no husband and kids….come to think of it maybe I should just try online shopping…