I went to exchange a pair of trainers recently but was told they’d need to order my size. A few days later, the shoes were ready for collection. That was a month ago, and I still haven’t picked them up. Instead I field weekly calls from shop employees, conjuring up bizarre excuses (“A dog ate my alarm clock”) and begging them to hang on to the trainers for just one more weekend.
It’s not that I can’t find the time to run an errand but, like many of my generation, if I have a spare moment, I feel I must fill it with work or socialising. Errands are simply not productive enough. I must do something outward-facing rather than inward; I must curry favour and manoeuvre and, above all else, I must hustle.
Eventually, you burn out. It’s an unsustainable way to live, and I dream about it being over. That to me is what adulthood looks like: I just imagine this immensely peaceful time where I no longer feel like an imposter and Radio 4 is interesting.
And I might be getting there. Because this week I received a gift of a bath set. A proper grownup, busy-mum bath set with salts, bombs and gels whose ingredients sound like a Christmas card from a posh family (love from Freesia and Bergamot, and Patchouli, the dog).
In the past, when I have received such lathery largesse, I have regifted it, but this time I felt my heart leap. I displayed the set on the bathroom shelf, thinking “soon”. I waited impatiently for Friday night, spurred on through the week by the promise. When the time came, I had no qualms about posting in the WhatsApp group: “Sorry, girls, can’t come to pub, got a bath bomb.” And for the first time, I did not fret about missing out, or pang with guilt about spoiling plans. Because I knew I was right where I was supposed to be. In my tub with my bubbles, a grownup woman, taking time out.
