I turned 33 last week on the 16th January 2025. This is not one of those posts where I tell you all the things I’ve learnt in 33 years. Mainly because honestly I feel like I am just getting started.

33 really is still young isn’t it? Isn’t it? I love how long life hopefully is and all being well I am only just over a third of the way into it. “In 2022, the life expectancy at birth for women born in the UK was 82.57”* I’m aiming for 100 but I’m also not obsessed with it.

I would love to live a long life but mostly I want to live well today. And I hope that by living well today it helps my tomorrow. Equally I could get hit by a bus or die in a plane crash so all the magnesium at night and finest olive oil in the world wouldn’t help me then would it.

That sounds so morbid and scary and those ideas would have previously really freaking scared me but I’m not scared.

I was listening to a woman on the news the other day who was 105 and she said her top tip for long life was common sense. She loves drinking a glass of Baileys. She also said she doesn’t feel old.

I’ve been at a point in my twenties where I was happy to give up on life. I was in the darkest place possible with my mental health and I wasn’t going to do anything to end my life but I simply didn’t care. I sat in a psychiatrist’s waiting room and I told my mum and my husband Sam to leave me there and to go on and live there lives and forget about me.

I had been zapped of every single molecule of zest for life. I was willing to give up. My mum saw it in my eyes and she said “don’t you dare give up”.

Every single day since getting better, I am not scared of death. I am scared of giving up on life. If you are able to keep your zest for life and you feel a tiny spark inside you each day that keeps you going then be grateful for that. Each and every day no matter how stressed or low or frantic I feel, at least I am feeling.

And anything more than that is a true true blessing. Recently I’ve felt such a strong desire to learn and to educate myself. On politics and money and religion and history. And wow does it make me feel alive. My mum and brother got me a retro radio for my birthday as I’ve getting into radio 4. As if radio 4 is the in thing to be getting into. Well it’s kind of changed my life so far this year.

I feel really connected to the world around me listening to it. I feel sharp. I’ve found the interviews so interesting and diverse and thought provoking.

Going into the next two thirds of my life, I want to recognise that we live in a day and age where the entire world is in our pockets and I want to use that wisely. I want to live an educated and spiritual and emotionally fulfilled life.

I want to live fiercely and peacefully. With my family and my pets. In the same little house forever and ever. Amen.

And now I’ll leave you with a diary entry from the 16 year old Lottie. Yes I’ve been keeping a diary since I was 15 and I still have all the entries.

18th July 2007 - 16 years old, just after completing my GCSEs with the depths of summer and house parties and heartbreak ahead of me.

“I don’t know whether it’s been the endless watching of philosophical Lucas Scott in One Tree Hill recently or just out of boredom but I’ve really been a very thoughtful person the last few weeks. I really know who I am.”

What a little cutie 16 year old Lottie was thinking she really knew would she was. But perhaps I always did and always have and always will.

Love, Lottie x

References:

*https://shorturl.at/cGeJc Statistic.com