The Not-So-Secret Diary of an Anxious Millennial

“It was the end of a decade, but the start of an age” As I write this, I sit in my lounge room on what is the last Sunday of 2019 and the last weekend of this decade. As the clock strikes midnight on Tuesday/ Wednesday, we will find ourselves in 2020, the start of a bright new future. I am sure that, as this moment comes, our social media feeds will be inundated with people making resolutions, jokes about how stupid resolutions are and reflecting on the year that was. I have, therefore, decided to do something a little bit different and reflect on the decade that was. When we saw in 2010, the first new year of this decade, I was 13 years old. I don’t think I fully understood or really thought about the significance of the new decade at the time and I certainly didn’t realise how lucky I was to have even made it into it. Now, at 23 years old, I am much more introspective and this is largely due to the things the last decade has taught me. Over the last te...

“When senseless acts of tragedy remind us that nothing here is promised, not one day… We lived through times when hate and fear seemed stronger; We rise and fall and light from dying embers, remembrances that hope and love last longer” – Lin Manuel Miranda It is so easy to get caught up in all the glamour of Christmas. As the clock ticks over to December, it is suddenly so important that we have the brightest Christmas lights, the tallest Christmas tree with the most presents beneath it. We spend hours on end at shopping malls, trying to find the perfect present for every person in our lives. It becomes so easy to be very narrow minded, to think only about our own situation and not to consider that of others. This year specifically it is so important that we change that mentality. ·       Right now, a large portion of our country is on fire ·       Just over night, two Rural Fire Service volunteers lost...

“May your heart remain breakable, but never by the same hand twice” I have been single for over two years. And before you all start planning my pity party, I have to tell you that I couldn’t be happier. After two consecutive serious relationships, both of which were incredibly toxic, I needed to get out on my own, to do what I wanted to do and to live life on my own terms, for the first time since becoming an adult with the autonomy to do so. There comes a point where you get bored of having to consult another person before you make a major life decision, especially when said person continually tries to hold you back. You get sick of not being able to go to a nightclub for a girls night without being question, you get sick of pointless arguments over things that, even with two years worth of reflection, still make no sense to you. I think this is the point you know that you need to be on your own for a little while. That was the plan initially, a little while on my own and then...

“Be yourself because life is too short to be anybody else” I don’t remember where I first heard this quote but I do know that it has stuck with me ever since. I think deep down, we are all a little guilty of pointing some element of our life in a different direction to replicate the success of someone else. Whether it is as simple as the way we dress or something as extreme as our career path, it is an innate part of human nature.  The difficult thing to realise is, what works for someone else may not always work for you. We see this all the time but it doesn’t always seem to sink in as part of a larger message. How many times have you found yourself scrolling through an online shop and have seen a model in a photograph wearing an outfit that looks fantastic? So you find the right size for you and add it to your cart. However when it finally gets delivered, it sits wrong on your body or the colour doesn’t match your skin tone. So now you are stuck with an outfit that loo...