The twentysomething life crisis

This post was originally published on Gadgette on July 16, 2015

Last year, I read a truly bizarre survey from the Office for National Statistics. The report, exploring the wellbeing of young people in the UK, showed up glowing rates of happiness. Like, suspiciously radioactive levels. Apparently, 8 out of 10 young people aged 16-24 reported high or very high life satisfaction. Staggeringly, only 1 in 10 young people in that age group were finding their financial situation difficult or very difficult in 2011-12. And there was me thinking that all that graduate debt, eternal internships and zero chance of ever buying a house had got the lot of us down.

The Jar of Nice Things

I hadn’t seen the idea online, or on a beautifully curated Pinterest board. It was a fleeting mention actually, bedded into a small print feature in a supplement that smelt like papier-mâché. So insignificant that I almost missed it as my eyes glazed the page.

The kernel of the advice, gleaned from feel-good mantras and psychological principles, was straightforward. Write down all the nice things that happen in your day – not just moments of materialistic gain, like your fancy new gadget gifted to you for your birthday, or the overpriced London restaurant famous for floral canopies that you finally managed to get a table at. Small things, like a nice email from a colleague complimenting you on a project, or a few pink clouds lacing the city smog as you walk home from work. Perhaps a wander through the lantern-thronged streets of Chinatown, or a particularly good passage in your book that described the smell of morning dew. Write down all those little moments it said, on the backs of receipts or scrap bits of paper; fold them in half and half again, and drop them in the jar.

In Praise of FFE's (Fine Female Editors)

Ever since the days when The Devil Wears Prada and the high priestess of fashion Miranda Priestly hit our screens, much talk has been made of the realities of journalism. Widely believed to be based upon the goings-on at U.S Vogue and its renowned editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, the film's characterisation of a female magazine editor produced one of the most memorable villainesses in recent times. Andrea, an aspiring journalist, lands a job that, apparently, " a million girls would kill for"; and thus endures Priestly's icy and often humiliating treatment for a year in the hope of climbing the greasy pole. So what, we laughed, that Andrea had to court the company of a great dane one day at work, or hunt down unpublished Harry Potter manuscripts for Priestly's beastly twin daughters? What of the woes of trying to book a private plane in the grip of a tropical storm, or being subjected to a rant on the colour of "cerulean blue"? We laughed at the dramatisation, thanking our lucky stars that those caricatures of female authority had disappeared long ago alongside pointy shoulder pads, shellacked hair and filo faxes bristling with executive busyness.