Your mid to late 20’s should come with a caution sign! All of a sudden my current relationship status has become a point of interest, even with people I’ve only just met.

Less than two minutes into a conversation at a party the other night, I was bluntly asked – are you single or married? Wait a minute, you don’t even know my last name, and you probably don’t even remember my first name for that matter – I only told you two minutes ago.

So why is it that everyone is so concerned about whether or not we are married, if we have children, if not, are we trying, what home loan we went with or when we plan to move to the outer suburbs to finally get that picket fence.

It’s as if everyone picked up the ikea catalogue for life, picked out their favourite flatpack lifestyle and followed the instructions on how to assemble. There is nothing wrong with that, but sometimes the instructions pages stick together and you miss a few steps and end up with something that vaguely looks like picture, but you’re left holding a couple of extra screws and it’s leaning a little to the right.

While everyone is quick to judge when you haven’t ‘ticked the boxes’ in life yet, they are also quick to forget that life doesn’t move in a straight line from birth to death. In between there is a lot of beautiful chaos. It is that beautiful chaos that makes life rich.

So no, to answer your question lady I’ve never met, I am not married. Yes I am single! But how about you re-fill your wine glass and let’s get honest about it.

I am single. I am single because I got out of an emotionally abusive relationship a year ago. The kind of relationship that did more damage than it ever did good. The kind of relationship your friends can’t believe when you let them know the truth. The kind of relationship you wish you had walked away from long before you did. The kind of relationship that takes time to heal from.

It’s almost as if unless you put a ring on it and said I do, the relationship never existed. It’s more expectable to be divorced than single. But aren’t they really just the same? A ring on a finger doesn’t make any relationship more significant than another.

But since you’ve asked, yes, I am happier than ever now and stronger than I thought possible. I may not have a husband by my side, but I have honest and loyal friendships. And don’t feel bad for me, I am getting laid and when I am not, with my independent woman’s income I can afford a vibrator.

Am I at least looking for a husband? Well in the app-happy world we live in now, I am on Tinder – and have successfully been on a number of very unsuccessful dates. Am I just being too picky? Shouldn’t I be? I would rather be single than with someone who wasn’t my Mr Right. So until that Mr Right comes along, I’ll settle for Mr Right-Now.

You really mustn’t looked so worry. I am not at home every night, alone, sobbing for my prince charming while my dozen cats meow at my feet to be fed. I only have one cat.

But please, enough about me. Is your husband here with you tonight?

Oh you’re divorced are you. Would you like help setting up your Tinder profile?

There is beauty in the ruins, the cracks. Rough edges are the scars of a life lived. If you look closely they share a story of love, of adventure, of heartache and of loss. We all have our scars we try to hide. If only we saw the beauty in our own ruins.

I wrote this piece five years ago. A reflection on a shadow that has followed closely behind me since I was 14.

Your shadow always just one step behind me. I feel you creeping up and ripping the air from my lungs. As I feel your breath my feet move quicker, my heart beats faster.

The light disappears and it’s only me and you, alone. I’ve no one to run to. Your pace seems to get faster, I know I can’t out run you. I lost this race the day I met you.

I can hear your breathing in time with my heart beat. It’s beating so fast it blurs my vision. All of a sudden I’m lost on a road I know I knew. I can’t hold back the tears, they flood my eyes as I curse your face. I never knew your name.

I know I can’t out run you.

I feel you put your arms around me and just as I give in, as I accept it is the end, I turn the key in the lock and you disappear. I am safe.

But I know the next time I walk out alone you will be there, waiting, stalking.

Your face has blurred over the years, it now only looks like fear. I see your face everyday and for that I hate you. I hate that after so many years I still feel you behind me.

If only you knew your actions that night wouldn’t stop when I broke free of your grip – you grip – it turns out – would last my life time.

There are days when everything is on track, you look in the mirror in the morning and think ‘fuck yes, I have my shit together’ as you rush out the door to work. And then there are those days when an adult seems like some mythical being that no one has really figured out how to be.

So maybe we can just settle with being adult-ish, happily lost somewhere in middle.

Maybe some days I will be career driven, set goals, network, brush up on my property investment knowledge and fine-tune that balance between cash and investment for my superannuation. And maybe there will be days when I throw on my onesie, put on my favour record and get lost in the intangible tunes as they fill my room while I daydream watching the light fades to dark outside my window.

Maybe there will be days when I remember the lessons learnt from previous relationships and promise to not make those same mistakes, I’ll plan for the week ahead, and Skype my parents. And maybe some days I will throw caution aside and go with what feels exciting, dangerous, knowing it could lead to a painful dead end, I’ll add to my bucket list and I’ll call my besties over to watch a disney movie.

Maybe some days I will clean the house, wash the car and budget for the month. And maybe there will be days when I get drunk with my friends and forget that that moment won’t last forever.

Maybe there will be days when I book that dentist appointment, empty the washing basket and sip herbal tea. And maybe some days I will pick up my friends so we can drive nowhere in particular, singing loudly to our favourite music and filling our phones with photos that capture our youth.

Maybe being an adult is bullshit and we should stick to being adult-ish and never forget to dance to music that makes us fall in love while we make plans we don’t know if we’ll ever follow through with.

Maybe we should hold onto the deleted scenes, the mistakes, the childish moments and that careless, wildly free spirit just in case that mythical being comes a few steps too close.

I’ve always had a goals list – to tell you a secret I even carry it around, folded up really small, in my wallet. I can remember writing goals lists for the longest time – maybe something I got from my parents, maybe something from The Secret book sunk in (though that book has some major holes in its theories)- for whatever reason, I’ve always written one.

And the best part – they work! I have had the pleasure of crossing off so many of the goals I’ve written down. Don’t get me wrong, not everything I write down happens. But that is the beauty – those things that don’t, don’t for a reason. Whether the reason is revealed to me at the time or months, maybe years later – there have been a few goals I am thankful for not coming into my reality.

My goals have always been a range of smaller and larger things that I would like to happen and both those, small and large, have come true and lead to some major life changes for the better.

Before you start shacking your head and yelling at your screen that this is all bullshit, ask yourself – have you written a goals list recently, do you have one currently, like right this moment can you jump up from your computer and pull yours out? There you go! You might think that you know the goals you want to achieve, they’re all listed in your head right? But that just isn’t going to cut it! You’ve got to right that shit down. The act of writing it down might seem simple, but it’s a way of working the goal out. Actually seeing it starring back at you in ink, now indented in the paper, is the pledge you just made to yourself to work towards what you want to achieve. As you write each goal down, you can visualise it in your head as if it had already come true – what would it look like, feel like? Feel it! Soak all that goodness up as you write it!

I have been fortunate to cross off lots of my goals. But you can’t be foolish and think you can just write your goals down and forget them. To achieve those goals takes a little luck sometimes, but a lot of hard fucking work all the time. But by writing them down you are taking the first step, you’re acknowledging that it is something that you want. You need to revisit your goals list. I look at mine sometimes once a week, sometimes once a month – to remind myself, re-visualise and to check in and make sure I still want that goal – sometimes what we want changes.

A week or so I was having one of those utterly shit days – I was feeling stuck and couldn’t see a way out of a few situations I was in. Those situations were intruding my space and littering it with bad vibes. So I sat down on my bed to rewrite my goals list and for the first time, also write the opposite of a goals list – I called these two lists:

‘What I want to bring into my life’ and ‘What I want to remove from my life’.

Just the process of writing down what it was I wanted to remove from my life helped to get my thoughts in check and once I read over the list I could see that all of those things I wanted out of my life, were in my control. Just as those things that I wanted to bring into my life are too.

I wrote these two lists only this month and I’ve already been able to cross off two things from that list of things to remove. BOOM! Out with some of those bad vibes and in with the good!

So if you want something, write it down, make a goals list and revisit it. You’ve got absolutely nothing to lose and a shit load to gain. Go on, be a Goal Digger.

“The problem with the world, is that too many people grow up.” – Walt Disney

Let’s be honest with ourselves for a minute here…sometimes this whole adult thing is tough and despite our best efforts, we lose sight of the silliness and fun. We get stressed about saving for that house, navigating the maze of which health insurance to get before we turn 30, or trying to figure out how to get our cars in for that well overdue service when it’s only open Monday – Friday, 9 -5pm. You know – Life admin shit.

Sometimes you just need to be a kid for a day. To do something that makes you laugh from pure, child-like enjoyment and for that entire day, forget that your an adult.

This is exactly what my friend Steph and I did. We grounded our adultselves for the day and took the kid inside us to Bounce – a 40 minute drive from my house.

Best parts of the day:

• Being a kid for the day
• Gravity socks
• Laughing at the surprising workout jumping on trampolines for a long time can be
• Endless trampolines all to ourselves

My adultself is going to be spending a lot more time grounded.

When it’s cold outside, go snowboarding! And a short three and half hours from my front door is a playground covered in snow!

Best parts of the day:

• Waking up early enough, to have already been up for hours, to witness the sunrise
• Attempting to teach my friend how to snowboard
• Mountain cold beers! A new level of ice old
• The vibes of the people we met on the mountain
• Not breaking my ass (no Queenstown repeat!)
• Watching the sunset as we drove home

Can’t wait to get back to the mountain!