It was my birthday yesterday. It was a lovely day, as was Christmas day before that and Christmas Eve. They were all lovely. They were as we planned them, they were calm and quiet, I enjoyed cooking and yesterday I enjoyed Kath taking over and being looked after and spoilt. We had lovely food with our mums, cuddles with cats and not a ‘should’ in sight. It was exactly as I had hoped it would be. And today I feel completely flat. Somehow it feels like the last 2 or 3 days were not at all what I wanted, like they were all about other people and not for me. I don’t know why I feel like that. There was absolutely nothing in those days that would indicate that. Had I described what I wanted before the 3 days, I would have described our Christmas.

I know my birthday is sort of a nuisance. I mean, who wants more people, socialising or food on Boxing Day, who wants a birthday celebration? I am so used to it obviously and it doesn’t actually bother me, except today it does. I am irritated by happy birthday wishes on Facebook – assuming that people only sent them because FB reminded them to, same with LinkedIn. As if that is a bad thing (if you did write on my timeline – thank you. It was lovely to hear from you in the moment even if my brain is being weird today). I am actually just irritated by everything. The fact that it is Saturday has annoyed me all day, as has the fact that I put the ‘wrong’ socks on this morning. The wrong socks? I mean FFS, I just put on socks… at some point my brain decided they were wrong. It’s just an annoying, irritating and fucking stupid day.

I renewed my Body Coach app today. Obviously that was annoying because I had a discount code that I then couldn’t find and it should have been a 2 minute job that took forever. Given my total lack of fitness and the brain fuck that comparison therefore is, I decided to re-set the app completely and start all over again. As part of that I had to put my height and weight into the app… So, I am 47, the heaviest I have ever been, probably also the widest but I am saving the joy of measurements for tomorrow. I am also unfit as nicely highlighted by our Christmas morning run/walk and our Birthday trot out which was a mile of run/walk and then 2 miles of walk because my hips and feet were protesting. We went for a walk this afternoon. A lovely walk that was fucking annoying and which sent my right hip and right foot into proper bitch mode. Guess who hasn’t been stretching enough and who hasn’t done any strength work for months. Oh me, that’s me. Idiot.

And then, because today is a stupid day, I was scrolling, and I suddenly realised that for weeks now, if not longer, I have been bombarded by weight loss or fitness content on my social media. It’s relentless. Every second post I see is either ‘hormonal weight gain gone with this magic exercise/herbal tea’; ’50 habits you need to ditch of you’re heading for 50′; ‘ten things peri menopausal women are doing wrong in the gym’ or some nonsense about how you can get lean in 6 weeks in just 15 minutes a day… No wonder my brain is fried. Every bit of messaging seems to be ‘you need to be thinner’. Didn’t we do this already in the 90s? We do not need to go back there! I thought we had switched to ‘strong not skinny’ and a different way of thinking about exercise. I thought movement was good per se, not because movement might help weight loss. I see some content that acts as a counter balance but I have to go look for that. I nearly didn’t renew the Body Coach app because I saw several transformation pics as I was looking for my discount code – all of them emphasised the weight loss. All – Of – Them.

The fitness stuff on social media is awful. I have been scrolling past almost all of it because I don’t care what some teenage influencer thinks I should or shouldn’t be doing, or how fast, according to some hot shot, let me check, social media personality, I should be running a mile or whether I run a 5 k faster than a list of supposed celebrities. Or at least I thought I didn’t care. But just the fact that it is there constantly has obviously had an impact. I am less keen than ever to go back to the gym. I don’t belong there. I don’t want to get on the bike, don’t belong on Zwift either, that’s for people who can, you know, actually cycle rather than go backwards at the first sign of a hill. And as for running. Hm. I have no business being out there pretending to be a runner. I am not a runner. Maybe I was once but maybe those hopes and dreams about things I wanted to do should just stay dreams, maybe they are no longer achievable. That. Or maybe today is just a really stupid, annoying day. Maybe I just don’t like forced transitions and artificial cycles and the pressure to re-invent myself. Birthdays are one of those – ‘what’s it like to be 47?’ Such an idiotic question, I am a day older than yesterday… nothing is different. And then of course the new year is coming at us fast with all that comes with the New Year, New You crap. And for me birthday and new year are annoyingly close together giving me a delightful double whammy of ‘do better, be better, this is your time to make changes and improve, become a better version of yourself…’ Urgh. Is 2026 going to see the new me? Is this year, where I, aged 47, finally get my shit together? Is 2026 going to be my year? I fucking hope not. That sounds exhausting and people-y.

Anyway, I think the best thing that can be done with a day like today is to turn it into yesterday as quickly as possible. I am not even going to try and read because every book I have picked up today has been irritating. Tomorrow we stretch, take our magnesium and take it one step at a time and maybe some of those steps have purpose, maybe some of them are even running steps… because today is just a fucking stupid, irritating and annoying day but I am still me and the impossible is still out there, waiting to be done.