I woke up on the morning of my 35th birthday with a sudden realisation. Sort of.
I actually woke up to the sound of the bins being collected. The realisation was that I hadn’t put ours out.
In hindsight my reaction was disproportionate. It wasn’t so much the knowledge that I’d be struggling for the next fortnight to force more rubbish into an already full bin, more the frustration that I’d prepared for this and still fucked up at the final hurdle.
If this story isn’t a quintessential account of suburban life in your mid thirties I don’t know what is. In fact, if you asked A.I. to write one, it would probably go like this.
Earlier last month when bringing in the bin of the week I noticed the ‘Christmas collection hours’ tag hanging from the handle and rather than leave it there to disintegrate in the December rain, like I might of done in the heady, carefree days of my twenties, I brought it indoors with me.
I made note of the changes to the day our bins would be collected (only one later than usual, result!) and updated the rigorous notifications system in my phone so that remembering the change wouldn’t demand any extra bandwidth in my congested head, nor contribute to any self loathing once I inevitably forgot. I could do without that, particularly as bin day would coincide with my birthday.
Christmas came and went, pleasant but unremarkable, I suppose you could call it ‘mild’ – just how I like it, and same goes for weather. The minor revision to bin day was fast approaching.
While out visiting my brother and his family on the 27th I received the notification to put the bin out. Upon returning home I made a judgement call to put it off until the morning. It was blowing (I believe this a technical term) a hooley. The last thing I wanted on the morning of my birthday was to be running up the street after the rubbish from the late days of my 34th year. That’s hardly starting with a clean slate is it?
I rescheduled the reminder for the morning and went to sleep safe in the knowledge that I’d made a series of well-informed decisions as a seasoned adult. The sort of person who over a number of years has successfully managed to get their shit together.
So what went wrong?
There was a time when the morning of your birthday might have be soundtracked by cards landing on your doormat, deposited through the letterbox above. The modern equivalent is a screen of notifications on your phone lock screen from across the multiverse of apps with messaging functionality.
The barrage of kind and considerate people in my life unknowingly buried the reminder notification to put the bin out.
I couldn’t blame them, how were they to know. I couldn’t blame the inanimate object either, that never ends well.
I blamed myself. I sat there stewing in it to the sound of the bin lorry manoeuvring around all the neighbouring roads for a good 20 minutes, each screech and groan of the rickety old thing was like a punch in the face.
It’s not a big deal, but that’s what made it worse. Adult life is much like the side scroller games we grew up playing, we’re just trying to make it through each level, dodging a variety of obstacles and saving our power for the boss levels that occur at regular intervals.
Putting out the bins isn’t a boss level. It’s falling through the gaps in the scenery you’ve made it across a thousand times before and losing a ‘go’ (to say “losing a life” here felt tasteless). It’s not the end of the world, it’s not the end of the game, it’s just painfully mundane.
I used to keep a regular blog. From New Years Day 2005 to New Years Eve 2013 I documented my life in a suitably melodramatic way. It was a good thing, I have all of that to read back, and wince about, forevermore.
Towards the end of those days I started to lose my groove. When I began writing I was 17. A lot happened between that age and 26. Then life slowed down, while time moved quicker. There were still significant things happening in my life (buying a first, then second home is probably up there) it just didn’t feel like there was much that warranted writing about on a day-to-day basis.
I was wrong and this was a mistake. Not just because I don’t have a record for the past 9 years of my life anywhere near as detailed as the 9 before it, I also lost a lot of my ability to write. I was still being paid to write as part of my job, writing to a brief is not the same as writing for yourself though.
Last year I decided it was time to change that. I came to realise I was suffering from a long build up of writer’s block and that was standing in the way of a new creative project I was looking to start.
The first breakthrough came in early 2022 when I raided my box of gig tickets and challenged myself to write up memories of each show. I built up a good momentum with this, regular short bursts of writing, dictated by the dates that corresponded with the tickets.
I want to get back to writing about life in general. In 2013 I was put off by this mundanity of adulthood. At 35 I feel it’s time I rediscovered some of my younger conviction. I had a bit of dread as I approached the recent birthday (probably more so than when I turned 30), but with another bin situation resolved and major litter crisis averted, I think I’m ready to embrace this drift into middle age.
Liam Toms 