Guardian Girl

I love Oliver Burkeman’s writing so I’m looking forward to having an official reason to practise what he preaches each week. If any part of this project is going to change my life it will, apparently, be this one.

This week’s column covers quite a lot of ground so I divided it into separate, easily digestible points, as one should always do when contemplating the nature of reality.

Conclusions:

• Don’t convince yourself it’ll all be OK – flesh out the worst-case scenario. As a life-improving technique this didn’t work for me. I asked myself:  ‘If I start a blog in which I have to follow everything the Guardian Weekend magazine suggests I might do, wear, eat, cook and think every single day of every single week, and then add unflattering photos of myself, paste them next to photos of models, attempt to write something hilarious about each task and publish the whole affair online so that anyone in the entire world – from my granny to my boss to my youngest cousin to my ex to a stalker to a prospective lover – can see it, what’s the worst that can happen?’ Then I fleshed out that thought for a while
• Don’t visit meaningoflife.tv unless you have nothing pressing to do for the next month. This is wise advice, as it happens. I didn’t follow it and neither should you
• Don’t hold on to the idea that the perfect relationship/job/house would make you happy. Yes, but what if I based each element of my relationships/job/house obsessively on a weekly lifestyle magazine? That would make me happy, wouldn’t it?