To Eleanor Oliphant with love - reexamining my empty life

this would be my classified ad, if I were to run one

This post is a follow up on a vintage post I wrote called How's My Love Life? which contains quite possibly the most embarrassing thing about myself I've ever published (although this post comes in a tight second) 

Here we are in March 2020 and Valentine's Day came and went - just a day on the calendar for someone who is single but not really motivated to change that status. Neither a lonely or a painful day, nor one to be rushed through and hidden away from. I don't know what is wrong with me, or if indeed anything is wrong with me. On the surface each day I am doing things that I want to be doing, I have a very solid, consistent contentment in life and I am both cheerful and wickedly funny about the really bizarre moments that life throws my way.

However.... it seems to me, and this certainly occurred to me for the first time when I was reading "Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine" by Gail Honeyman that I am coasting through life not unlike Eleanor, she had her little routines and I have mine. I mean I am choosing to run a creative small business from home for not much money and little impact on the world, choosing to stay home with the dog and watch Netflix or devour a book + snacks. I get excited about online purchases I make and new music I add to my playlists. I like having friends I don't see too often because I have more time to just chill and be me and put my plantar fasciitis wracked foot up while lounging in my not-very-active-wear.

But then I realised that years have gone by with absolutely nothing to show for them. Where are the life adventures? God knows I don't have any money, so I must have really lived on all that dime, right? But not. It gets frittered away on books, and clothes, and food and that's what I've done... I've consumed time and money and built nothing lasting.

I'm doing what I want to do every day.... but not what I want to do every decade or for a lifetime. The individual moments are all very enjoyable, but the life..... where is the life? Have I published my book? Have I really travelled anywhere? I chose not to marry or have kids - though I am a little bit afraid of being home alone one day when I have my heart attack (because that's the other thing, I'm pretty sure that's only a matter of time too), and after my Mum dies I will have a loneliness that cuts me even now just thinking about how I will be the last person who remembers her family - they are all dead and gone, and when Mum goes I'll only have my Dad's family.

I'm maybe only semi-okay now.

But Eleanor began to expand her horizons and develop meaningful relationships and so can I. Even if I'm not quite convinced I want a love life, I am convinced I need to stop wasting so much time and actually do some real stuff. I might be okay staying single - if there is such a thing as a Spinster Gene it definitely runs in my Mum's family (and some of those ladies were total babes in their day) but I definitely need to allow life to change up on me and stop going with the flow.

So I am saying a massive thank you to Eleanor Oliphant and taking a leaf out of her book, no more coasting, no more wastage, if I can't fulfil my promise to Diane to find love, I promise to find LIFE.