The balanced life
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.
Maxi-ed out
I’m not very good at maxi dresses. I have only one. This week’s All ages is going to be tricky as a result.
The lengths
The shorts
A rather unpleasant photo today.
I am also supposed to be doing something ridiculous with my hair in the manner of someone from Glee, says The Measure. Achieving this hairstyle would mean having extensions put in my fringe, the red colour stripped out, and the whole lot bleached platinum and cut short. Just thinking about it gives me split ends and a migraine. I do however have this vaguely snarling picture of myself in a blonde wig, so that will have to suffice for today’s effort. Lame, I know.
Sue Sylvester's Vogue
Me being grumpy at a fancy dress party
I apologise. It’s the best I can do. I don’t even watch Glee, even though The Measure’s been telling me to for about six months. I tried once and it just seemed to be full of bad jokes. Maybe I need to give it another go. But when one is trying to cook like Hugh F-W, dress like Jess C-M, be as wise as Oliver Burkeman, live in a show home with a perfect garden, earn enough money to buy the necessary accoutrements and exercise enough to maintain the required dress size, where does one honestly find time to watch television?
Back to dinners, I had to work late last night before going off to a gig and then running home, leaving no time for cooking. I bought me some crisps and some chicken drumsticks, and downed a few pints of cider at the pub. That was as close to papas arrugadas with grilled meats and aperitifs as I was going to get. What I did get was loads of grief off my mate Charlie for being fat. I think I might actually have to go on a proper diet and lay off the baking for a while. AGAIN. Jeez.
Conclusions:
- It’s always the same – I come back to a Guardian Girl stint with a vengeance and by the second week I’ve totally lost enthusiasm. How do I always forget how hard it is to make life work in this way? Stoopid damn cooking.
I've always found it funny when people write letters to the Guardian's Weekend magazine complaining that the recipe ingredients are too middle class and the fashion only looks good on thin people. After all, it's just a magazine. Or is it? I decided to follow its recipes, fashion and lifestyle advice as closely as possible, to see if the aspirations promoted therein can really be achieved by the average reader who is not especially wealthy, not necessarily model thin and is obliged to work regular office hours. This blog has no affiliation whatsoever with the Guardian but I link to the Weekend magazine website for the purposes of illustration. 
Guardian Girl 
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