As I type this I am sat on my bed. Next to me is a pile of magazines. A pretty big pile to be honest as I seem to have accidentally collected a backlog.
I have Woman, Glamour, Ms, Lonely Planet Traveller and Gardens Illustrated. I have already done the ‘tricky crossword’ in Woman, (not that tricky), but the rest are untouched, if possibly a little out of date. (I did say I had a backlog.)
Sitting on the bed with them makes me happy. Even better, the fact of them making me happy makes me even more happy. That probably sounds a bit of an odd thing to say but I feel a bit like recently I have forgotten about some of the simple things that have always given me pleasure.
When I was younger, one of my very favourite things to do was to go to bed early with a cup of tea and a little snack and a pile of magazines. Even the fact of just sitting on the bed, not at bedtime, feels like a bit of an indulgence – a throwback to being a carefree teenager.
How much time must we have spent as teenagers sat on our beds? Hours and hours and hours, watching TV, doing homework, chatting to friends sat at the other end. It was nice wasn’t it?
I feel like I want to do more of that. I’m not going to make guests come and sit on my bed or anything, that would be weird, but I want to do more stuff just for me, hanging out on my own.
I stopped being a teenager really when I fell pregnant at 16 and now that the girls are older I want to rediscover and reconnect with that feeling of not having to think about anyone but myself, if only for an hour or two, sat on the bed with a pile of magazines.
So that’s what I’m doing. (Once I’ve written this.)
Are there similar things that you have lost touch with that you would love to do more of?
Yeah, finishing work at my part time job and buying J- 17 and Mizz and Smash Hits, and a quarter of sweets, sat on the bed listening to Kylie (vinyl or cassette tape lol), those were the days!
Author
YES to all of those magazines! Do you remember ‘position of the week’ – in Mizz I think?? That was the ULTIMATE in sordid :-)
OMG you are another me Jo!! I’ve got a subscription to Good Housekeeping. I’m currently on the June issue and November has just dropped through the letterbox. No doubt full of Christmas must haves at exorbitant prices that I can’t afford! Truth be told I can afford next to nothing in there. So why don’t I cancel the subscription? Now that is the $90 million question and the answer is I don’t know. I just like it and feel like I’ll miss out if I don’t get it. Plus I got one of those special deals so it costs less than the cover price. Plus I like to know I’ve got entry to read. If I don’t get my finger out and start reading v soon I will be reading about Christmas next summer God forbid. When I get my own place with a garden I will start on House Beautiful and Gardeners World. God help us eh?
Author
It’s a bit ridiculous isn’t it?! Still, I just like knowing they are THERE :-)
Love this. I try to make time for me as much as possible but in years to come I’m sure I’ll get even more time to do things like relaxing baths, reading…
Author
You definitely will! As kids get older there is a real feeling of the world opening up a little bit, and more things seeming possible again! That seems a bit dramatic but I’m sure you know what I mean :-)
Oh remember doing this too. I used to love Sugar and Mizz magazine. I do love a good magazine, but like you’ve said these days they end up in an unread pile! x
Author
It’s still nice just HAVING the pile though right? I find that in itself comforting!
I never really read magazines any more, unless they’re in a waiting room. I think the fact that we consume so much of our media digitally now means that we miss out on those things we used to do. There’s probably lots of things I’ve lost touch with doing over the years, but nothing obvious springs to mind.
Author
I really love having a physical magazine because I really love doing things like ripping out pages I like or cutting out pretty pictures – you can’t do that digitally! (I know, Pinterest…)
Music. I still listen to a lot of music, but wish I did more. Music festivals are essentially a thing of the past and I haven’t been to the Brixton Academy for a very long time. C’est la vie, hey?
Author
Do you get to go to any of the family music festivals? It’s not quite the same sense of abandonment but they do often have some pretty good bands.