i am cheese and wine

As in.. aged . 

And for the first time, I can feel it. 

Normally birthdays leave me feeling secretly too young. which is very different to the 'young at heart' I will always want to be.

No, being secretly too young requires recoiling in horror at bank forms you don't understand, despising heeled shoes, being hideously insecure about who you are and what you want, getting too drunk too often, the list of undesirable traits for someone now into their twenties is endless and pretty descriptive of my last decades. 

This year, however, this birthday has come just in time. September Fourteen landed on me mid-transition from the above to actual adult. And the key to this, has been realising that more than one kind of adult exists. My reluctance to become my parents got a bit confused there with reluctance to become a grown up, as it seems to with everyone. But the more 'adults' I meet and admire, the more I can happily morph into one. Adults who don't have permed ridiculous hair, who aren't dressed entirely by Myers For Women, who love their intriguing brilliant partners, who love the job they skip to where they make a real difference,  who go to gallery openings and cafes and earn money and spend money and travel and read things other than Woman's Day, who haven't accepted where they are as where they'll always be and who aren't tired and worn down by the grind of a life they hate, but instead increasingly alive thanks to the doors continually opening for them and the life they're living the way they want- something you don't get to do at any earlier age. 

Yes, similar to the prepubescent dreams of teenagerdom with  it's overflowing opportunities and cool, I'm now having the similar sensations about being in my thirties. It's quite odd. 

Like my coffee snobbery and inability to bother trekking long distances, I blame it all on the inner city. For the last few years, instead of seeing Soccer Moms trying to stay 'youthful looking' and  crying into wine about boredom and botox somewhere in Camberwell, I'm tripping over adorable toddlers who are attached to lecturers with dyed hair and Genki coats,  or being asked my opinions on a book I'm  reading in a cafe by someone twenty years older but reading the same book, or watching very organised but completely unbored couples gathering what they need at the market for nights ahead with equally unbored friends. These people are me, but smarter, more financially secure and with more exciting life experiences behind them and, key point that is often overlooked, ahead of them.

It's not the end. I'm not dead. I'm just getting started. And it's a little bit exciting. 

Know what else is? Some of this guy's stuff . 

Every few pictures there's something that jumps down my throat. I like. Also love some of the captions. "Later he told me the lawn chair only tasted ok." ..