Why I'm NOT having coffee with my younger self...

But I will share five things I know to be true in my 40s

There she is

I love a trend. I built a writing career upon my desire to always know what was happening, what was new and which combination of contacts/info was required to access the secret dive bar at the top of that east London tower block. I spent five years at Time Out London reviewing bar launches and spa launches and shops and restaurants until I became a sort of one woman TripAdvisor before TripAdvisor was a thing. Friends would call me from a corner of Soho or Shoreditch and demand details of a venue that was open after 11pm on a Monday. I always delivered.

It wasn’t just bars, I knew which sample sale would yield the most glorious bargains and the exact time the Stella McCartney for H&M collection was launching and which under-the-radar skinny jeans brand was about to go stellar. It’s kind of embarrassing to admit now I’m in my 40s but, even now, if I get slightest whiff something is limited edition or about to sell out I instantly want it more. And I have a razor-sharp instinct for things that are about to sell out.

Nowadays I prefer to call my love of trends an ‘interest in pop culture’ because it takes the emphasis away from buying stuff (which is very much not my jam) and because it’s true and it always has been. There might have been slightly more focus on bars and fashion back in the 00s but my obsessive trend-spotting extended to books and art and music and cinema and joining this radical new website called Facebook back when you could add yourself to a group called ‘I like cheese’ to commune with fellow brie lovers across the globe. And I still do genuinely want to know about the new author, the new painter, the new tour (half my inbox is pre sale codes) and whatever TikTok trend is doing the rounds. Oh the TikTok trends…

Which leads me neatly on to last week’s (and this week’s too it seems) trend of the moment… I Met My Younger Self For Coffee. Side note: I’m also obsessed with discovering the originator of such trends and giving credit where it’s due… so just in case you don’t already know: this one went viral when Jennae Cecelia shared the poem from her book Deep in My Feels. And just to be super clear, I like the original a lot! And definitely a whole lot more than I liked trying and failing to read 500 rehashed versions in tiny font with increasingly tedious details of exactly how late and early everyone was. Sorry if you wrote one but seriously… ugh.

I couldn’t bear to add anymore details of punctuality or exact beverage orders to the mix so I decided against meeting my younger self for coffee. But I did think a lot about whether I’d really have anything much to say to her if I did. And I definitely wondered why the assumption is that the older self is the one with all the wisdom? I’m mostly talking about the versions that jumped on the trend here rather than the original but most people ended with some sort of advice and by giving their younger self a hug. Fair enough I suppose, but I’m pretty sure younger me would be like ‘no thanks old me, I’ve got somewhere better to be in five.’ I also can’t imagine younger me listening to what older me has to say, never mind applying any hindsight rules to her life. I mean, we all know the mistakes are part of the process!

Even when I really thought about it I couldn’t think of that much I’d tell her to do differently. I mean…the decisions she made then have led me to where I am now and, when I think about what really matters, I’m pretty much okay with how it all turned out. It would have been nice if she’d invested in Microsoft as a teenager or understood what compound interest is or started a pension instead of spending all her cash on clothes and cosmopolitans but the life stuff… I dunno. Younger me did okay by older me.

There was a sliding doors moment where she picked a job writing bar reviews at a brand new city guide company over a post-grad in periodical journalism (for financial reasons that could have been solved with loans) that I’d love to see the outcome of (my younger self and current self both want to write for Vogue #manifest) ) but other than that… the most I could come up with was maybe she should blow caution to the wind a bit more. Do the course! Book the trip! Take the risk! Kiss the (now very famous) comedian who travelled all the way down from uni in Scotland to see her and to hell with the angry new love interest standing on the other side of the Halls of Residence bedroom door. My advice would pretty much be: Do more of what want to do, when you want to do it, while the option is right there in front of you. Maybe? Could I write a poem about that?

Don’t get me wrong, I actually love reading advice to my younger self type features when they don’t all start with the same banal information. Whether I take any of it into my heart is another matter. I don’t think any of our younger selves would pay much attention to anything we say or do or tell them. I don’t even think the younger people reading Instagram poems about what we’d say to our younger selves are paying attention. I don’t pay much attention unless I’m hurtling towards a big birthday and someone has written a piece called ‘40 things you should know by 40’ or suchlike.

If I met my younger self for coffee I’d probably be more interested in what her advice was for me. But if she initiates that hug I’m all in.

But enough over-thinking TikTok trends because the subhead for this post promises (ironically after all that) Five Things I Know To Be True In My 40s and seeing as my younger self isn’t listening maybe you will? Or you can ignore me and keep living and breathing and failing and trying again because that’s where the magic happens anyway. I’m easy.

Five Things I Know To Be True In My 40s

1. Young People Have More Wisdom Than You Think

   There’s nothing I hate more than hearing people my age or older tell young people (especially teenagers) that their dreams can’t come true or that they’ll ‘learn how life really is’ or that change will never happen or even that they straight up don’t care because x, y, z (usually the environment) is not their problem. I don’t understand the desire to stamp young people down I so often see in others (even those close to me sometimes). I get that a confident, idealistic and determined teen can trigger all sorts of buried stuff about who we are and what we stand for in life but where does the urge to argue instead of listen come from? If the world doesn’t need more confident, idealistic and determined young people I really don’t know what it needs. Seriously, send them my way and I will pay attention and try to help and tell them I believe in them until the end of time. I learn something every day from my teen daughters (and not just about how to do contour properly). Listen. Learn. Pay attention. Leave yourself out of it if you possibly can. Your world is different to their world. Just because you don’t understand their POV doesn’t mean it is meaningless. And of course change is possible. Quite frankly, it has to be.

2. You’re Not Too Old & It’s Not Too Late

   You’ll never be younger than you are right now this second. And there are no rules when it comes to those dreams. Yes, some things might be off the table (I’m never going to make the 30 under 30 writers list I dreamt of landing on in my 20s) but so much still is. If you want to do something, take a small step today towards making it happen today. And I know it’s a cliche but the journey really is just as important as the destination. I get that not everything is in our control here and it takes a certain level of privilege to ditch day jobs and pursue passions, but that’s not what I’m suggesting right now. Instead consider what you can control? What you can do differently? Could you talk to yourself with more compassion? Could you believe in yourself a little more? If you want to learn something new or expand your mind or get healthier or pursue a dream or connect with like-minded people, it’s all possible one step at a time. In fact… comment below if you need a push in the right direction and I will send you a prompt.

3. Just Do It

   My main advice to the younger self I didn’t meet for coffee applies here too. If you want to write, write. If you want to paint, paint. If you want to travel on private jets to far flung destinations wearing head to toe D&G, I can’t really help you. But I can encourage you to put yourself out there more. Again… comment if you need a push. I recently What’s App bullied (gently!!!) my Mallorca-dwelling stylist friend Leesa into posting her first Substack and it is brilliant. Read it here. By the way, Leesa your Substack is not linked on your Instagram bio… please fix that immediately! No one is paying as much attention as you think they are (Leesa might not even make it this far down this post!). Honestly no one is overthinking this quite like you are. No one is analysing your every move. It might feel like the most cringe thing ever to promote something you have created online (I could have died when my publisher told me I had to start using pictures of my face more on Instagram!) but sharing is where you find connection. And the more you do it, the easier it gets. I am living proof guys! It is also totally okay to keep your art to yourself if that’s what you want. Art for art’s sake is the very best kind. But if you’re hoping to find people who connect with your work… why not put it out there and see? What’s the worst that can happen? You cause an internet stir because you piss someone off somehow. That’s universally considered a win these days so I say go forth.

4. Blaming Other People For All Your Problems Isn’t The Answer

   Yes there are some bad guys out there – and please know I’m not talking about abusers or criminals or even politicians here (we can definitely blame them for all sorts of stuff) – but not everyone is a toxic narcissist you need to cut from your life immediately. And don’t think I haven’t been there on this kind of thinking. Yes true narcissists do exist but if they were as common as the internet says they are right now we’d all be screwed. The hard truth is that most people are people just like you, dealing with their own issues and their own tricky childhood and their own set of weird beliefs that feel imprinted onto them rather than views they’ve formulated by choice. Someone once told me to imagine someone I was finding difficult as the child they once were and it made a lot of sense to me…most of us are just out here doing our best and getting it wrong quite often. I’m not saying you have to put up with any bullshit here but do allow yourself to question the narrative sometimes. Because you can’t really change other people but you can change your own approach and an approach based in love and kindness and seeing and expecting better often wins out in the end. And that’s not saying that you are responsible for anyone else’s behaviour because you are not. But you can change your own narrative anytime you like… and the moment you switch to one where you have power and generosity of spirit and responsibility for your own part in how things panned out is the moment you find freedom. And freedom means progress most of the time.

5. Connection & Community Counts

   Look, I get it. We’re all chronically online these days and I am a massive introvert who would happily sit in a room on my own hiding behind a keyboard until the end of time, but no one ever delivered a eulogy at anyone’s funeral about how excellent their cat memes were. Don’t quote me on that because I know I’ll be proved wrong. The people we surround ourselves with influence our trajectory more than we realise and the connections we build with them matter. If you’re anything like me you’ll have all sorts of friendships you consider to be pretty solid but are mostly formed of instagram exchanges or What’s App messages. I’m not saying these aren’t real, I’m just saying the magic happens when you take them out of the apps and into the real world. Even a Zoom gossip sesh ups the ante (right Lisa Lister?… another must read Substack btw). So if you take one thing from this five point list of rambling thoughts let it be that. God we need a paragraph here…

   Challenge yourself to connect today! Schedule an actual call with your bestie. Make an actual plan for your birthday (note to self!). Join that local gardening group you’ve been thinking about joining for years. Use the Just Do It rule above to just get on a bus or a train and see someone IRL. Join an online community group that hosts live online meetings where you actually get to talk to people (my annual January Coven does just this and it is magical). Sign up to a course. A free one maybe? Even writing a physical card or sending an actual letter would be a step in a more magical direction. You can thank me later but you’ll probably be too busy relishing in new found community spirit to remember. If you want a better relationship with your family… see and speak to them more. If you want life to get more interesting see what’s available to you where you live (it’s always more than you think). Actually ask people questions about themselves (I sometimes can’t believe how much people don’t do this!). Teach your children to do that too (so they can develop the skills to make their own connections). Know that you have the power to switch things up. If you want turn a friend group into something more close knit suggest a plan and make it happen. Say ‘Yes’ to the invitation whenever you can. Be an enthusiast. Be supportive. Give good guest. Put yourself out there. Be someone who includes others rather than excludes them. And if you’re happy with the status quo of your current connections know that’s totally fine… I already said you can ignore me! However, if you want more connection in your life it’s time to start where you are and use what you have. Ask someone if they fancy a coffee. Go to a community yoga class. Reach out to an old friend or connection. Stop and chat to your neighbour. Do something, anything that makes life feel magical again.

If you liked reading this you might also like my memoir A Year of Mystical Thinking (published by Hay House and a 1.99 Kindle bargain if ebooks are your bag)… it’s about a year I spent exploring the spiritual world in a bid to make life better.

You can also find me on Instagram.

And my website is here.