The Problem With ‘romanticising Your Life’ (from Someone Who Knows)

It’s all about appreciating those special little moments, but there are way to many distractions to really make it count

A splinter of desperation has attached itself to my sorry attempts to romanticise my life. I guess the project started in lockdown as I, along with everyone else, scrabbled around for ways to get through the days with our humanity intact. I lit little candles, you know. Kept the fairy lights on. Working from home, I wore a heel under the desk, though that was short-lived as I tripped on my dressing gown. I upgraded said gown, incidentally – on eBay I bought 1 x silky kimono thing, and for the darker months, in which we now find ourselves, something belted and lilac in silk velvet. The plan was that I could always throw it on top of my grumping thermals to add that shard of glamour when the Asda delivery man arrived, but I fear it falls slightly short of the 1930s Hollywood vision I was aiming for, and I look more like “a person going through something”.

Which to be fair, is not not true. Who of us, especially those of us on a similar quest, those of us intent now on “appreciating the little things”, “romanticising our life”, as the phrase goes – can say different? We are the people who were drawn to this as a kind of call to action, keen to try to “live with intention” and look for moments of beauty, at least in part because of our inability to see it anywhere else without squinting. At first, the content this inspired was kind of lovely, in the right mood, at other times vaguely sickening. Nice ladies making extravagant coffees, and lots of tulips, avocado toast. There was something refreshing about the feeling that we were zooming in on little normal lives rather than watching grand ones from afar, beautiful people living beautifully, beyond our means. It was a quiet renouncing of the aspirational “wellness” world, and an embrace of accessible moments of joy. Very difficult to argue with that. Very difficult for maybe, like, six months?