Am I partial to a morning walk before work? Absolutely. Drinking enough water and eating a balanced diet genuinely does make me feel better. Reformer Pilates does too, and there are few things more satisfying than waking up after eight glorious, uninterrupted hours to a sleep score above 85
Yes, these are all objectively good things. And yet, somewhere around turning 30, I started to wonder whether we’d become a little too good at being good. Our lives are so carefully optimised – the workouts, the meals, the steps, the sleep – that there seems to be increasingly little room left for the messier parts of living. By which I mean, of course, the fun parts
Our days are packed with work, gym classes, meal prep, skincare, step counts and sleep goals – plus, for the especially committed, perhaps a three-month marathon training plan or 75 Hard thrown into the mix. There is always another habit to build, another metric to improve, another version of ourselves to work towards
We seem almost insatiable in our pursuit of feeling “well”. And somewhere in the middle of all that self-improvement, the spontaneous Wednesday afternoon drink at the pub has vanished. So has the dinner that turns into another drink, that somehow ends with a bottle of rosé at midnight. The kind of night I fiercely loved in my mid-20s. One, I was happy to pay for with a headache at my desk at the next morning.
