Strange. Boring. Venting.

It’s rare that these old bones have a week when social activity is everything. Mostly all activity is reserved for the weekends with the odd smattering of an evening with colleagues occurring during the week. A couple of weeks ago I had an incredibly busy week. One like I have not had in a while.

Saturday/ Sunday: Assorted engagements, almost all involving food, some involving music. By midnight on Sunday I already need a week to recover from the full-on days and late nights.
Monday: Dinner at new Indian restaurant with colleagues. Amazed at eating genuine Indian, especially my favourite rumali rotis. Roll home stuffed with Galouti kebab, too close to midnight.
Tuesday: Meet old school friend at Tapas bar. Our second meeting in 14 odd years but feel strangely connected. All warm and fuzzy reminiscing but runs well past bedtime.
Wednesday: Dinner at cosy Italian in Holborn with different colleagues. Chatty and stuffed and up too late. Again.
Thursday: Friends round for dinner. Shamefully poorly planned spread but genius conversation. Feel tired but strangely rejuvenated.
Friday: Dinner with friends stands cancelled. Gratefully collapse into bed at 8pm. Exhausted.

Busy but not utterly exciting.

I don’t know when this happened. This drip drip change from YOUNG, VIBRANT being into slow mo old auntie. We used to party/ socialise ALL THE TIME when we lived in India. Work all day and then play all evening. Go to movies, check out restaurants, go dancing, attend parties; with groups of friends or sometimes even on our own. We went out to get ice cream, eat momo’s at Dilli Haat, drive half way to Agra to eat in a dhaaba, eat chaat at Bengali market, attack hot chocolate fudges in Nirula’s, drive back in blinding fog from late night movies. All the things other contemporaries were doing. Whichever way you looked at it we were always busy. Doing something. Going somewhere. Getting scolded on a regular basis by my mum that her house was not a hotel/ launderette.

We don’t do that anymore. The wild skida-adling. Maybe it’s because we were in our twenties. Maybe it’s because we weren’t married. Maybe it’s because we’ve become so fat all we can think about is that next beer and pack of chips and sitting on a sofa. Maybe it’s because we’ve turned into vegetables. Maybe age has dulled our brains and all sensory enjoyment just flits past us. I don’t know but the age ship has definitely sailed.

I’ll be honest. Life is still fun. I love living and working in London. I love that I have found new and lovely friends. I love that we travel a lot. I love that we go out to eat when we want, where we want. I love that we bought a home. That we are always adding to it. But I am in a strange funk where I just constantly worry that I am aging before my time. That this is what I'll have forever more. This elderly-ness feeling. This settled feeling that is great but also dead boring and where all my staidness makes me feel 52 and not 32.

I can’t remember the last time I have felt young and vibrant and interesting. We go out a lot. A LOT. We spend weekends entertaining or being entertained. Or go out for meals to all manner of restaurants. But it’s all grown up stuff and unsurprisingly springs back to food. Every darn time. Dinner at my house darlings. Lunch by the Thames Dearest. Even the busy week above was all about the food. That vein of boring. Nobody ever calls anymore and says “want to go clubbing dudes”, “let’s go to a concert”, “let’s have a picnic in the park”, “’lets drive to Antibes”.

I admit I’m the main culprit of my inanely boring life. Forever throwing dinner parties, calling them soirees and pretending that I’m above it all and way too mature to be doing what the youngsters claim as their domain. I’ve gotten too comfortable with the sitting-on-a-sofa kind of entertainment, hooked to a schedule of Ugly Betty/ Brothers & Sisters/ Men in Trees/ Greys Anatomy. I should be the one taking the lead, booking us into concerts, having picnics, eating at exotic places, dragging V clubbing, organising parties, shying away from the easy sitting-on-a-sofa, cooking-for-an-army option. DOING and not just being. And I don’t mean ‘doing’ as in staggering home blind drunk at 4am, just more ‘feeling excited with life’ kind of stuff. Moving away from an undercurrent that isn’t singing “same ol’, same ol’” all the time.

I don’t know what I want or why I am writing this out. I'm thinking of it as cheap therapy where I am on a chaise longue, teasing out the answers I know but won't admit to without talking it out, reasoning with myself. Realising that I can’t explain this very well. For I am content with what I have and thank my lucky stars for what my life is. I feel blessed in more ways than most people can count. But I am strangely unhappy, exhausted and disappointed with what I have become. Like all my organisation, planning and grown-up-ness has come back to bite me in the behind. A discontent, an aged-ness, that I fear partying will not banish. I fear I’m looking for an excitement that even I, deep down, know doesn’t exist. Like an alternate perfect world, a utopia I'm missing out on. Like always feeling that everyone else’s life is better/ more exciting/ interesting; grass is always greener yada yada yada.

What I do know though, sadly, is this: if I got IT back, whatever the hell IT is, I’d probably kick its scrawny happy ass out of my house before settling into my sofa. There is no therapy for idiots.