Making rules for life

I've been absolutely obsessed with my looks recently, which, given that my concept of time is extremely poor, means approximately the last 28 years.

Its ranged from the reasonable (maybe I should shave my beard?) to the slightly more radical (perhaps it's time to seriously invest in cravats and a monocle). Now I've even started to draw other people into it. It started off simple, asking friends questions like "Do you think I could pull off pink brogues?" Now it's mutated it forcing random acquaintances to reveal their height and age so I can compare myself more accurately to them.

I think it may have something to do with the fact that I seem to be being marched with ever increasing speed towards my 30th birthday. Before the inevitable happens I kind of want to have some solid boundaries set in place as to who I am, what I stand for and where I'm heading. Unfortunately I seem to have been grasping for these answers since my teenage years and the solutions seems just as elusive as ever. Instead of facing and accepting the uncertainty of these 'big' questions I think I'm trying to focus on the smaller issues like my appearance which have simpler, more tangible answers like "pilates will make me taller!" and "Only eat ratatouille from now on, that'll get me an adonis-like physique!".

The strange thing is, despite not knowing the answers to any of these big questions and it generally being a random cluster-fuck of awkwardness, confusion and not changing the world, I've really enjoyed my twenties. I have a terrible habit of creating non-sensical rules for myself. The most recent of which has been that the transition from twenties to thirties will somehow herald a new, grey era of sensible eating and drinking with less emphasis on insanity and more on grown-up career progression. I may not know what I do want out of my thirties but I'm damn sure I don't want that and maybe that's good start.

Besides, at this point the majority of my friends are actually in their thirties and, if anything, they're probably the craziest people I've ever met in my life. I only hope I can live up to their wonderful example.

So I've decided on this occasion to disregard the rule I set myself and instead throw myself into the future head-first. The jury is still out on cravats however.