Ten Reasons

Ten reasons my 30s will be better than my 20s

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1. I’m turning 30 tomorrow, whether I like it or not (unless I don’t, which would be a whole lot worse than the alternative), so no point in clinging on to those rose-tinted memories of my twenties, when I indulged myself in feeling mightily superior to teenage me, but still young enough to be called ‘youth’ by my brother.

2. Compared to a volcano I’m still super young!

3. I might not be quite so youthful anymore in human years but I’m not actually any closer to getting old, in fact the more years I have, the further ‘old’ moves away. I can prove it too: when I was 10 – 30 seemed old, when I was 20 – 60 seemed pretty old, but now I’m 30 – 90 seems old. Clearly old is just 3 times as far away as your actual age so, by that logic, although I might not be so young anymore, I’ll also never be old.

4. In my 30s, people will assume I am mature and experienced so I expect I will be able to bluff my way through challenging scenarios more competently and can pass myself off as an expert on certain subjects on the basis of age, rather than actual experience (if this isn’t true please don’t disillusion me now).

5. I had a surprise birthday party at work today and one of the girls, for the first time in her life, made Apple Crumble in honour of my Britishness (she is predominantly Belgian). I never had anyone make me nationality-themed desserts in honour of any of my 20 something birthdays so this is already an improvement.

6. In my 20s I did lots of interesting ‘experience-gaining’ type things (like studying Human Rights and then the law conversion course, interning in Cambodia and moving to Switzerland). Whilst I regret none of these things I hope that now I’m older, and therefore must be wiser, I’ll be able to just know stuff without the challenges of having to acquire information. So for the time being we’ll ignore any evidence to the contrary, like the fact I’m itching to start studying again and that the world doesn’t actually work like that.

7. In my 20s I never had much money (see point 6 above for various reasons why) but now all that crazy stuff is behind me, I’m confident my 30s will be the decade I actually start to enjoy having money. In a couple of years my student loan will finally be paid off. Hopefully I won’t have to accept any more loans from my parents and may even be able to pay them back at some point in the coming ten years! I might finally become a real grown-up (said with a tear in my eye)!

8. In my 20s, I spent a surprising amount of time caring what other’s thought about me, worrying about how I was spending my time and wasting my youth. Well now that youth is wasted I actually no longer care if people think I’m ‘cool’ or not, which I just as well as I’m definitely not cool. Unless we are talking in some sort of ironic, British in a land of expats, uncool-cool sort of way, but we probably aren’t.

9. In my 20s, I worried about how I would achieve so many life goals before I was thirty, like establishing myself as an expert to be revered in my chosen career, getting married and having kids, exploring every continent and mastering at least one other language (apparently being able to talk with my mouth full doesn’t count). Now that I’ve missed the deadline for these things, the pressure’s off.

10. I’ve come a long way since I turned 20, I’ve done some things I’m pretty proud of, met some awesome people and had some great experiences and although there have been some not-so-good moments too, these are far outweighed by the positives. So I’m pretty confident that I’ll go a long way in the next ten years, in ways I haven’t even considered yet. Cool, eh?

Ten reasons I had a wonderful day

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1. The sun shone even thought the forecast at the start of the week said it would be raining.

2. I found a 5 franc coin on my way to work (that’s about £3.50 or a little over $5) which is a decent sum in it’s own right and the coin had a pleasantly heavy feel about it as I dropped it into my jeans back pocket. I will spend it on something insensible.

3. My cat only woke me up at 6am this morning and then after a quick banishment from the bedroom she didn’t wake me up again until my alarm went off. This is an improvement from being rudely awoken at 4am by said cat banging on the wardrobe doors and consequently, on being shut out, banging on the main door at least once an hour until I’m supposed to get up.

4. Aside from a little hayfever, which is par for the course for me at this time of year, I woke up feeling completely chipper.

5. I met a friend for lunch by the river, in the blazing sunshine, and allowed my bare naked flesh (although I am only talking about my arms before anyone gets too worried about the idea of me over-exposing myself to all an sundry of Geneva) to feel the sun’s heat without the need for a coat. And I didn’t get sunburned. I also got to feed some sort of biting insect, so that’s wonderful for them, I guess.

6. The fiancé undertook the trip across the border to France to stock up on excitingly cost-effective (compared to Geneva prices) supplies for a party we are having this weekend. When I returned home the kitchen and cupboards were laden with supplies and best of all he knows me well enough to have got me some treaty things I could eat now (so I don’t eat all the party food before the actual party).

7. We actually have enough friends in Geneva now that we can have a party, which is nice as I’m going to be 30 soon and don’t want to feel like billy-no-mates as I transition to my fourth decade.
8. I had a very productive day at work where I could see actual progress on a couple of things I’ve been working on and the boss agreed I could work from home tomorrow to concentrate on a report.

9. My postal vote for the upcoming UK elections finally made it to Geneva and as I’m going back to the UK next week I can post it from there and be reasonably confident it’ll arrive in time for me to participate in democracy (Swiss post surprisingly not as reliable as I had expected).

10. As a result of the fella’s shopping trip we had a lovely, if perhaps not the healthiest, dinner of fancy hotdogs (proper sausages in fresh baguette).

Ten reasons blogging is bad for your health

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1. Everyone knows only narcissistic types that give too much importance to their own views write blogs. So if you write a blog that must mean you are one of those people and if you tell people you write a blog then that means they know that you are one of those people too.

2. You might think you are being original but actually when you are staring at a blank computer screen you’ll find yourself skimming through thousands of other seemingly original blogs to either outright steal their ideas or at least use them as a trampoline to your own inspired ramblings. For example: this post is ripped-off from inspired by AOpinionatedMan’s ‘why my blog sucks’.

3. It’s easy to treat blogging as an online journal type thing, except the beauty of old-fashioned book type journals is that no-one else reads them. On a blog you might accidentally let slip all sorts of secrets and weird aspects of your personality, such as strange zombie imaginings, for anyone to see.

4. There are already so many great ways to waste your time (like reading, watching tv, endlessly Facebook stalking old school friends) blogging is just another excuse to go to bed later than you should do and to waste free time that could be spent on more productive things (like cultivating understand through literature, catching up on relevant popular culture through visual medium and investing time in becoming reacquainted with the lives of old friends).

5. Most bloggers aspire to have a popular blog read by more people than their mum, and want to feel the ego boost of being loved and admired far and wide. However if your blog does actually become popular then you can become a target for jealous angry types (who I understand have brightly coloured hair and live under bridges) who might tell you you aren’t as wonderful as you think and may even use mean words to try and hurt your feelings.

6. Blogging is the ultimate delusion. We’ve all heard stories of people who started blogs and now get millions of pounds a year on the back of their humorous wit and whatnot, but thinking this might happen to you is as unrealistic as dreaming that you are distantly related to a rich prince of a made up country like Liechtenstein, who will die and leave their country, castle and ridiculous wealth to you, because somehow they like you more than any other distant family member (maybe they are a fan of your blog).

7. Blogs give you a platform to talk about anything you want, but some things you don’t need to talk about. Seriously who wants to read about when you are feeling sick, worrying about getting old and the fact you like to eat weird shit?

8. Starting a blog is a bit like buying a pony on a whim. You think blogging will be a fun diversion from stresses and strains of everyday living but before you know it you are devoting more time and energy than you have to spare to this thing you have created and find yourself regularly questioning whether you shouldn’t have thought the whole idea through before just jumping in.

9. It’s easy to blog, so easy that there are millions of us doing this. So many in fact (of the probable-but-in-no-way-substantiated-by-actual-evidence kind of fact), that if you asked every blogger to hold hands there’d be enough of you to circle the globe 300 times over.

10. There is so much blogging advice out there (you shouldn’t write lists, lists are popular, you should only write posts of less than 300 words, if your blog isn’t at least 2000 words no-one will read it, you should post at least every day, you shouldn’t post more than twice a week, etc. and contradictory etc.) that if you try to follow all this you will develop mental health problems.

Ten reasons I’m glad I’m not a zombie

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(…even if I sometimes feel like one)

This is an Easter inspired post, no really, you know, the whole rising from the dead thing that Jesus had mastered, as reinterpreted through popular media into the whole living dead franchise! (Definitely less tenuous a link than comparing the eclipse and Bonnie Tyler)

1. It’s possible Zombies aren’t a real thing, and that if I were dead that would actually be it.

2. I’m not convinced that human flesh and braaiiinnnsss in particular are all that tasty. It seems sad to lose my carefully developed appreciation of fine culinary experiences like melted cheese and potatoes (here’s to you Swiss cuisine), fiancé-made ginger Mojitos and best of all warm salty popcorn and Galaxy Minstrels combined (do not knock it until you’ve tried it)!

3. It sounds pretty frustrating, we all know Zombies tend to lose much in the way of brain function when they come back to life. Some might say that’s a fair trade off, chance to live again versus decreased intelligence, and there’s definitely truth to the old saying ‘ignorance is bliss’. However, it’s got to be a bit annoying that when there is a nice tasty human hiding in a nearby room, you can’t get at them by just simply using the handle to open the door but instead are forced to smash a window and potentially hurt yourself just for a bite.

4. It seems a shame that rather than loved ones being all excited to see me again after my untimely demise, they instead rush to bash my head in with old records, cricket bats and tubes of metal piping (where do people find those anyway?).

5. If you were one of the first Zombies it’d be cool and novel and trendsetting but then as everyone starts copying you, you’d move from minority to majority and then be less unique and special and no-one would know whether you were one of the originals or a copycat and would continue to try to destroy your brains without giving you any credit for originality.

6. Communication will be so much more difficult when your vocabulary is limited to a range of moans and groans. Future blog posts would be limited to things like ‘grooaann GRRooaaaaaannnnnnn, groan, groANnnn’ and that’d probably be a bit tedious and lose me readers.

7. Personal hygiene really goes out the window. I’ll admit I like the odd day where I don’t have a shower and might bum around in PJs for an entire day every now and then but I really don’t want the whole rotten flesh stench following me around all the time. I’m not sure that even Febreeze could hide that.

8. It sounds quite exhausting, constantly on the move searching for food, having to tear open people to get at their yummy intestines. You never see Zombies sleeping or going out to a nice restaurant where people just bring the food to you, do you?

9. You are constantly being judged negatively. With very few exceptions (not discounting Nicholas Hoult winner ‘Warm Bodies’) zombies are generally cast as the bad guy and no-one living is prepared to give them the time of day (except psychopathic children in The Walking Dead but they aren’t the best endorsers).

10. I’m afraid I might try to eat my cats, which would make me feel bad. Eating the fiancé and other friends and family would be quite bad but trying to munch on the four-legged fluff monsters would be a travesty!

For more Zombie related blogging you can check out my post ‘The zombie wedding I wasn’t allowed to have‘, if you want to.

Ten reasons it’s easy to be a recluse in the modern era

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1. Virtual social life obscures lack of actual social life

You can pretend to have an active social life, be fully engaged in the latest details of the lives of hundreds of contacts just by posting the odd status update on Facebook or wherever and clicking a few random ‘likes’ here and there. There is no need to actually engage with anyone. Should anyone intrude on your personal space by making a comment on one of these updates you can just click ‘like’ until they go away again. I call this the virtual unreality.

2. If you can’t be a part of everything you might as well not exist

There are so many social media platform that if, say, you only really use Facebook and created a Twitter account for the sole purpose of thinking it’d somehow make your blog cooler there are so many other online arenas you are completely failing to engage with. When it comes to Tumblr and Pinterest and other things you don’t even know the name of you might as well be living in a cave.

3. Fisticuffs over Facebook will lead to societal meltdown, or at least intractable family divisions

I envisage that future wars will not be drawn up over boundary or ideological disputes but over those pro- and those anti-Facebook. Seriously, I’ve had some pretty heated exchanges with my brother about why he bothers with sending words via Twitter and images via Instagram when he could just combine the two in Facebook, he argues that FB knows more about me than my fiancé. One of these days it’ll come to fisticuffs at dawn.

4. Your social life depends on your smartphone battery, so its doomed

If you have an all-out power failure or maybe just misplace your phone charger your access to a social life will die in the amount of time that’s left in your smartphone battery. So that’ll be about two hours then.

5. It’s now so much easier to flake on people

It’s easy to ‘forget’ to actually meet people. Remember a life before smart technology when you used to meet people by making plans on Monday that you’d meet on Saturday at the waterfall in the shopping centre at 11, and somehow that actually worked? Now if you don’t confirm and reconfirm plans at least twenty times you have a legitimate excuse to just not show up by saying ‘I’m sorry, you didn’t facebook message me two seconds before I was going to leave the house so I assumed you weren’t coming’.

6. You can be a hermit without anyone noticing

You no longer need to leave your house. Ever. You can work remotely. You can order clothes and food online to be delivered to your door. You can attend online networking events. You can study online. You can meet new people online. You can even Skype friends and family if you really feel the need to look at someone in real time. Once you’ve mastered hurling your bin bags at the bin collection spot there’s no need for you to actually set foot outside ever again.

7. Too much homework to hold an actual conversation in the pub.

There is so much information online, Wikipedia articles, YouTube videos, virals of an elephant riding a horse balanced on the helmet of a man on a skateboard that if you try to go out in public without knowing what’s #trending you will be shamed into looking like a moron and lose any real friends you thought you had.

8. Cybertourism removes the need to actually go anywhere

Ever wanted to see the Pyramids, the heads of Easter Island or just the British Museum? Once upon a time you had to work bloody hard, save up loads of money and then you could go on an awesome trip none of your friends had done and enjoy bragging about it when you got home. Now everyone has already been everywhere that you can see what these places are like through friends pictures online or using GoogleEarth spyware, getting a drone or just doing one of the online tours tourists attractions are offering. Why get out of bed and risk encounters with the stinking masses when you can feel like you’ve had a productive day by having a quick online tootle around Parliament in your pyjamas whilst eating Marmite toast in bed. No-one can see you to judge the butter in your hair and crumbs on your face.

9. Reading the Daily Mail Online increases fear of the outside

Certain highly reputable yet overwhelmingly popular sites, in the UK it’s the Daily Mail online, I imagine in the US Fox news has some sort of online equivalent, would have you believe that the world is a terrifying place full of disease ridden immigrants, violent immigrants, insane immigrants, volcanic eruption-causing immigrants, traffic-inducing immigrants, financial-crisis-inducing immigrants and just bastard-stealing-candy-from-a-baby immigrants who make the world such a terrible place you might as well stay indoors.

10. Being a recluse is really what everyone wants

Technology has been designed to help people lead easier lives (and also to make us think we need expensive things to lead meaningful lives). Cave men lived in caves, which was great but in the age before technology it was realised it was actually easier to live together in commune to get more stuff done in an ‘I’ll milk your cow you give me a turnip’ sort of mentality. Nowadays we don’t need other people for comfortable lives but we still cling on to this concept so all this great technology helps us to transition away from old fashioned ideas of friendship, family and community and to progress towards single unit living, like the single-cell amoeba we all came from.

Ten Reasons ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ was better than the actual eclipse

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In case you were in any doubt I am comparing Bonnie Tyler’s song to the recent astronomical phenomenon in Europe, which was, at least in Geneva, massively disappointing where cloud cover obscured anything that might have been vaguely interesting.

1.Durability.  The single was released in 1983 and it’s still widely known today 30+ years later, whereas the eclipse only lasted a few minutes.

2. A Solar eclipse blocks out the sun’s heat and light, on the contrary Bonnie’s song brings warmth and light into the hearts and lives of so many.

3. Bonnie’s song features the memorable, if somewhat bizarre, lyrics ‘turnaround bright eyes’, which implores bright eyes to turn around so she can look at the brightness, but you can’t look at the brightness of the eclipse without risking sight damage. Although judging by those in the music video their bright eyes might in fact result in or be the result of sight damage.

4. Bonnie is something that Welsh people can be proud of and unite around that is more impressive to non nationals than leeks and daffodils and less reputationally damaging than sheep. The eclipse doesn’t really belong to any one group to get all teary eyed and emotional about.

5. You don’t have to wait decades to listen to Bonnie Tyler, you can play that single whenever you want whereas the UK seems to be averaging an eclipse every 12-15 years (last one 1999, now 2015, next one 2026). Please note I take no responsibility for any legal action that might ensue if this blog post inspires you to play the song on repeat at 3am and your neighbours decide to sue.

6. ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ has sold over 9 million copies, which probably amounts to more money than people selling eclipse glasses made.

7. The single probably inspired loads of girls, and boys too (no gender sterostyping here thank you very much), to pursue dreams of singing their little hearts out. If the eclipse inspired anyone it’s to eat so much they become rotund enough to create eclipses for people on a daily basis by eclipsing their view at the bus stop or wherever. This is probably a less healthy aspiration than wanting to be a famous singer.

8. According to Wikipedia, ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ was meant to be a Vampire love song and everyone knows that vampires are cool (literally, because of the whole dead thing, and figuratively, because I’m old enough that I still think cool is a cool word to use). So the song is Vampire friendly, which is non judgmental and inclusive. But the eclipse wasn’t vampire friendly because it wasn’t a total eclipse so it’s not like vampires could even come out and have a look at it if they’d wanted to (unless we are talking sparkly Twilight vampires, but we aren’t because that’s just silly).

9. You can bond with friends by loudly shrieking the song lyrics at one another, you can’t bond with friends as a result of the eclipse because either the eclipse wasn’t rubbish but you couldn’t see them or it was such a non-event you weren’t sure it was really happening and there was no moment to inspire communal karaoke.

10. And finally, my absolute trump card which is worth all the preceding nine reasons put together, and really the only reason I started this ridiculous list, is that Total Eclipse of the Heart wins hands done because it’s whimsical music video inspired the truly fantastic literal version of the video. If you haven’t seen it already check it out and prepare to snort out your tea with amusement.

 

Ten Reasons to Just Keep Going

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(when you’d rather curl up in a ball and sleep until it all goes away again)

1. Sadly hibernation isn’t an option. Unless you are a bear. If you are a bear, then firstly kudos on your unacknowledged reading skill and secondly, I suggest you find yourself a nice cosy cave and sit this one out.

2. You cling on to a blind, and in no way scientifically substantiated view, that everything will be alright at the end of the month/once you have won the lottery/after you’ve reached retirement/etc.

3. It’s easier than stopping to acknowledge you have no time to stop and shouldn’t have wasted precious moments stopping to think about this.

4. Consequences of stopping might prove detrimental to career, health and relationships. Some might argue not stopping might prove detrimental to the very same things but I haven’t time to stop and think about that.

5. The vague memory of when you didn’t have to make yourself keep going motivates you to keep going until you reach a point where you don’t have to again. Crystal clear? Peachy!

6. Everyone around you is also keeping going. If you stop to ask them why and then they stop to think about this and stop someone else to ask them why, you could effectively cause the entire universe to grind to a halt and then where would we be?

7. You secretly suspect that hints of whinging about not having enough time is something that people who have enough time to whinge about do and that those who really don’t have enough time just get on with it. So unless you want people to think you are simply a pretend busy person it’s best not to say anything.

8. You can use this as an excuse to reward yourself frequently. For example ‘just keep going for another X hours/until so many words have been written/everyone else has gone home’ and then as a treat you can watch another episode of a trashy tv show/have a cat-napping break (cats optional)/make brownies (and then use next just keep going until X break to eat brownies). Whatever floats your boat.

9. You can’t go back, standing still gets tedious so might as well keep going.

10. You hope if you use the phrase often enough and repeat constantly as a mantra to yourself the slogan will either be adopted by a major brand for which you will be paid millions or people will think you are crazy and no-one will ever sit next to you on the bus again. It’s a win-win situation.

just keep going - bp image

Ten Reasons To Own a Cat

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1. No more clothing dilemmas

You will never need to worry about what to wear ever again. From now on, everything will be covered in a furry sheen of cat hair so everything will match!

2. Easily co-ordinate with others

You will also be able to coordinate with your friends, family, co-workers and fellow commuters, everyone you come into contact with will also sport the Jasper Spring/Summer/Autumn and Winter look for every year, whether they want to or not.

matching cat hair - bp image3. Convenient excuses

You can use them as an excuse to get out of things you don’t want to as in ‘I’d love to come to the International Paint-Drying festival’ but I have to get home and feed the cat. However, if you do want to go to the International Paint-Drying Festival you can just give them extra biscuits in the morning and they’ll be alright if don’t get fed again until the next day.

4. Affection

Cats are very affectionate and love to jump on your lap for cuddles and head scritches. Often whilst you are in the middle of something else like sewing, reading a book or trying to work from home. Probably not recommended to have them loose in the car when driving.

5. Cats like to share

Sometimes, in the middle of head-scritching session, Jasper likes to violently fling his head about from side to side and cover you and your nearby possessions in cat snot. Sharing is caring. He must care a lot.

cat snot - bp image6. Presents

Cat’s bring you presents and not just some ball or stick you throw away but things they have lovingly prepared themselves. That dead bird was carefully stalked, brutally murdered and covered in the perfect amount of cat saliva before being deposited somewhere fun for you to find.

7. They keep you healthy

Cats love playing chase the scrunched up train ticket from one end of the flat to the other. Because they are concerned about your health they won’t bring back the train ticket but will expect you to constantly walk from one end of the flat to the other to continue the game for as long as they determine you need to exercise. If they think you are eating inappropriate things, they will lick that butter, eat those chocolates and chew up those peanuts to save you from yourself.

8. Musical enrichment

Not only do they have wonderful singing voices but they like to improvise musical instruments with ordinary household items. Like banging on the cupboard door, or playing the blinds in your room like a Xylophone. They are often at their most creative at 3am in the morning and will gladly wake you up to share this with you.

9. R.E.S.P.E.C.T that is what you mean to me (says the cat in his own way)

Cats show you respect by saluting you each day. They like to do this, coincidentally around their breakfast time, by gently nudging you awake, flicking their tales in your face and then doing a bottom salute at eyes and nose level.

Cat salute - bp images

10. No need for an alarm clock

With a cat you’ll have no need to own an alarm clock, they will be sure to wake you for work each day by scratching at your arm, meowing in your ears or scratching the walls until you are ready to rise and start the day. If they think you might need extra time to get ready in the morning, they can provide an extra early morning wake-up call at 4am.

 

 

 

Ten Reasons Not to Diet

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1. There is already so much misery in the world: starvation, poverty, disease, there’s no need to add to this by denying yourself your favourite snack.

2. You’ll be less productive. Dieting requires willpower to say no. Willpower requires determined brain power. Brain power spent on willpower is diverted from work/chores/finishing the novel/whatever.

3. You’ll have less energy. Yes eating two grapes and a rice-cracker might help you shape up for swimwear season. But calories, so often denounced in the dieting world are a measurement of energy, the less you have the less energy you have. If you get fired from work for falling asleep at your desk or collapsing from fatigue picking up a document from the photocopier you won’t be able to afford to go on holiday to show off your bikini-buff body anyway.

4. The three ‘C’s’ of Chocolate, Crisps and Coke (4 ‘C’s’ if you want to call it Coca-Cola) trump the three ‘L’s’ of Lettuce, -Lite (note also how your ability to spell deterioriates with dieting) and Longing (for anything more tase-bud inspiring).

5. Lunchtime loneliness. No-one is ever going to invite you to join them for lunch if you are going to spent 45 minutes taking 30 bites of every mouthful of the two sticks of celery you have carefully prepared.

6. There is a danger you will crack and eat something inappropriate. I was a bit hungry going round Geneva’s Natural History Museum on Saturday and I noticed this by considering every stuffed animal on the merit of whether or not it would be good to eat. All sympathy for the fake dodo was gone as I looked at it and understood why it was eaten to extinction in the first place. Imagine what would have happened if I was at the Museum after a diet of licking one spoonful of muesli and having one cup of hot water and lemon? Can you get deported from a country for eating cultural exhibits and scaring the children?

dodolicious - bp image7. You’ll lose friends. Anyone slightly bigger than you will feel that your decision to diet means you think you are fat and ergo that you think they are enormous. You will be so insanely jealous of these same friends when they walk past you with a sandwich, biscuit or cup of coffee with sugar you’ll avoid them to prevent food-envy from making you throw the sandwich to the ground and stamp on it so they can’t enjoy what you are denying yourself.

8. There are only so many vegetables in the world. How can you justify eating so many of them and by increasing demand inflating prices so that poor kids will be forced to eat chips at lunch because they can’t afford the salads they would really like. Their poor day-time diet will affect their ability to learn. Eating vegetables is ruining the health of children and destroying their future!

9. Time is precious. Yes, you could waste an hour or so preparing your vegetables for a nutritious bowl of broth or you could spend 5 minutes pricking the plastic on the ready-made-fare and letting the microwave do the work so that you can start your Netflix binge a whole hour earlier!

10. You are pretty awesome as you are, wobbly bits or right angles or whatever’s going on with you, you can work that and there are people out there that will love that about you.

Ten Reasons I Can’t Accept a Compliment

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1. I’m British. Self-deprecation is a national past-time.

2. I don’t know how. I’ve never been nominated for an Oscar so have never had any reason to spend hours in front of the mirror practicing my gracious acceptance speech.

3. I’m suspicious. I suspect you have a motive for something. My work colleague bought me two oranges this morning. He had an agenda. I think of your compliments as those oranges and am trying to work out the agenda.

4. You are complimenting me on the wrong things. Do I need a compliment on how nice this dress looks or how good my language skills are? Why do you never compliment me on the things that matter? Like when I made you a cup of tea without any cat hair floating on the top, the fact my hair doesn’t look horrendous although I couldn’t be bothered to shower that morning or that I stacked my collection of different sized post-it notes into a pleasingly aesthetic pyramid.

5. I’m not sure it is a compliment. ‘You’ve lost so much weight, well done!’ Is that a compliment? Is it just highlighting that I needed/still need to lose so much weight?

6. I’m cynical. I don’t believe you. I too have tacked on a ‘that looks really nice’ to a comment that was meant to stop at ‘oh, you have had your hair cut’ but was then followed by an awkward pause that needed to be filled.

7. I don’t want to reciprocate. Accepting the compliment may make me feel obliged to compliment you in return and lying is a sin. I’m not going to hell because of social conventions. Other reasons, sure. But not social conventions.

8. I have low self-esteem. You are probably mocking me. I’m going to find a nice corner to cry in now.

9. I have a god-complex. Your compliments are meaningless to me. Does the boot care if the ant thinks complimentary thoughts about it as it stomps the ant out of existence? No. Go waste your worthless compliments on someone who thinks you matter.

10. I don’t want to scare you off. Your compliment was lovely actually but if I say thanks in a way that truly expresses the overwhelming inner joy I feel with Cheshire cat grin and shiny eyes open-wide to frightening proportions and glistening with the tears of joy about to fall, you will not only never compliment me again but will probably move to a different country just to get away. Much safer to grumble a non-acknowledgement and move on.