Guardian Girl

I only just read Oliver Burkeman’s column this week and am gratified to see how much it upholds what I was feeling yesterday – that if trying to balance and perfect all the various aspects of your life wears you out too much, perhaps having an imbalanced life is preferable (I hadn’t actually reached that conclusion to be fair, I was just doing the whingeing bit). If this blog is anything to go by, I’m generally happier when my life is hopelessly out of kilter. Trying to do everything well mostly just stops you from doing anything well. I’m veering towards thinking the answer might lie in skewing your life dramatically in one direction at a time, for example becoming uber-healthy for a month or spending all your free time making your house look nice, and then choosing another task to tackle next.

Maybe I’m biased because this is how my life tends to work out whether I like it or not. And maybe in turn this is why I find all the Guardian business so hard. My way of achieving balance happens over the course of a few years, not a few days. Perhaps I ought to adjust the project and dedicate sections of time to completing self-help books with all my concentrative powers. I could become Fabulous in a Fortnight, then Make Any Man Fall for me, then Detox my Life, then Declutter my Home and so on until I have turned into Gwyneth Paltrow and lost all my remaining friends.

In the meantime, my one maxi-dress has come out to play.

Some people

M People

Conclusions:

• I’m still having a break from the recipes, purely to win a point against Charlie the fat-caller. What with all the running I do, a few weeks cutting down on the carbs will sort me out and then I can reinstate the baking with a clear conscience. But my god, the cookies I’m missing this week! They sure do look good. However we can’t be good at everything all at once (see above) and it’s true that I should really get back into my summer clothes at some point. Another chicken salad it is, then.
• Obviously the M People caption is pure irrelevance. It just sort of came out. It always makes me smile to think of M People, anyway.
• Did pretty well on the outfit today though, huh? And is anyone else a bit unsettled by the way the model looks about 20, and you can only tell she’s any older by looking at her hands? I think it might all be prosthetics, like that bit at the end of some Tom Hanks movie or Titanic where you can totally tell it’s just an actor in an old suit. Not sure if this is a cuss or a compliment to the model.