‘Flirty-Thirty’ isn’t happening. I’m just trying not to burn out…

I’m a 90’s baby who had the utter privilege of an analogue childhood - that is now resulting in full blown digital burnout.

Both work and life related. Both of which are social work related, because being a social worker means my life revolves around my job, even when it doesn’t.

My instagram and Facebook feed are awash with brunches and bad choices. I can honestly say aside from a love of Avo-Toast and a penchant for an existential crisis, I don’t know that I’m ‘millennial coded’. My values very much make me ‘Gen-Z’ adjacent.. but then, I kind of liked Boris in an affable, shouldn’t be running the country way - which is a significant alienating factor from the Gen-Z torch the establishment vibe.

Seriously, please don’t torch the establishment. Force it to do better. There’s no such thing as erasing history and it’s a dangerous thing to even consider. Pulling down a statue doesn’t change that people suffered, leaving them up doesn’t honour it either. The statues themselves were for accolades, not atrocities. We need context to them, not erasure of them.

So maybe invite a little nuance and let them stand, but refuse to take a selfie with them and smile when a pigeon answers natures call on the bronzed bust instead?

Help them to become reflective spaces, rather than tourist traps.

Am I allowed to say that, or was that insensitive? I promise I’m not joining Reform or voting Conservative.

I think I need a real adult. Ah wait. I am one.

I’d blame my balance of cynicism and optimism on being a social worker, but it’s firmly rooted in growing up running through the grass barefoot as a child - and spending evening on Neopets, later to become ‘Habbo Hotel’ as a teenager - the OG ‘chat site’ that should not have had a 13 rating and where nobody was honest about their A/S/L.

I became a social worker, so my perspective of Habbo Hotel has significantly changed over the last almost-two decades. Ditto for ‘Bebo’ and ‘Tagged’. When I tell you I’m incredibly excited for the Online Safety Act - it’s not a professional proclamation, it’s a personal pledge to ensure my own future children don’t end up lying about their own A/S/L - and I might also receive a few less referrals.

I vaguely remember feeling like I couldn’t wait to be an adult. Then I became a social worker, and embodied one. Had an existential crisis about it. Started writing about it. ‘Bon-appetite!’

I can’t be alone in this though - there have to be other people out there balancing adult jobs with a longing to go back to collect pogs, crazy-bones and get insanely frustrated about crash-bandicoot instead of the crashing economy?

Did anyone else follow their calling, and find themselves growing up in entirely different ways than anticipated?

I’d love to know.