When I worked in pubs, there was a type of person I came across on a fair amount. They were usually aged 25-35. They were scathing of all things mainstream, loved to ‘educate’ people on the right music to listen to and shopped only in charity shops for the clothes they liked to call vintage, even if they in truth were made in the early noughties. They appeared to have jobs, because they had disposable income, but by the frequency of mid-week benders they went on, they can’t have been jobs in which they had any level of commitment or accountability. Oh, and despite the fact they drank in the same pub at least 3 or 4 times per week, they were ALWAYS rude to the staff. They stole things, destroyed soft furnishings and repeatedly got barred for smoking indoors or getting sloppy drunk on one too many occasions.
This post isn’t about what horrible people they were (though, just to be clear, they were pretty horrible people) because I like to think of myself as a tolerant and accepting person (err, I can hear you laughing you know….) and don’t judge people I don’t personally know, because you just never know what might be going on in someone’s life to make them behave in certain ways. The thing that got me about these people though, was that, even though to most people the way they chose to conduct themselves was quite obviously not particularly nice, they thought THEY were the ones who had grounds to judge others. They actually thought they had the best life ever, and that the rest of us were boring sheep, committed to a life of pedestrian misery until our equally dull deaths finally released us from this world.
I lost count of the number of times I heard them mock the ‘average’ joe. People who dared to care about paying their bills on time, who worked hard at their jobs because they thought it was worthwhile to forge a career. They laughed at the idea of going to a garden centre on a Saturday afternoon rather than binge drinking in the pub all day, because why bother investing time and attention into making your home nice (well, considering the majority of them rented I expect that wasn’t something that ranked highly to them). They basically thought the rest of us, who just wanted a quiet, simple life, must be the most boring people on the planet.
As stupid as it is, even though I knew most of their mocking probably came from deep rooted insecurity about their own lives, I allowed a bit of that doubt to creep in. I still, to this day, have the odd moment where I question whether or not my life is ‘exciting’ enough. I can’t remember the last time I had an all day drinking session in the pub, or rolled home after the sun had come up. And when you start getting to the point in your life when you feel like maybe this is it now, and you’re ready to start slowing down, it is easy to start questioning whether or not you’ve really experienced enough just yet.
Honestly though, I know in my soul that I’d take ‘boring’ and pedestrian over ‘glamorous’ and exciting any day. I’ve just spent this weekend doing all the things those people would have considered dull – we’ve stayed in watching Netflix, we’ve walked the dog, we’ve done a big food shop, gone sofa shopping and now Dan is busy roasting a chicken while I catch up on some blogging. That, I’m sure to some people, doesn’t exactly sound like the most thrilling of weekends, but it dawned on me today that I don’t think I have ever felt so contented in all my life. So screw you, judgy hipsters from my pub days. You can keep your crazy party lifestyle and your lack of commitment to anything other than yourselves. If this is boring, I’m all in. Bring on the dull, tedious trips to Dunelm Mill and afternoons spent in Aldi – I embrace them. Each to their own, but couldn’t be happier with my predictable existence!
Love,
Picking the Day 