A fair to middling life
A fair to middling life for the average woman can be a wonderful thing and can also be incredibly frustrating, but what is a fair to middling life I hear you ask?!
Basically a fair to middling life is about always being in the middle, or as I like to call it part of the forgotten normal. It’s about not having the best of everything but still having enough so that you’re happy and you have what you need. It’s about never reading about someone like you in magazines or even on social media. It’s about exercising enough to be healthy but not spending 20 hours in the gym every week. It’s about always being forgotten by society (in the broader sense) because you’re doing ok.
If you have read my About Me page you will know that I am British but I now live in Sweden, and in Sweden they have one simple word for being fair to middling and that word is ‘Lagom’. Linnea Dunne has written a fantastic book about lagom, and if I have described you and your life in the paragraph above you should give it a try.
Whilst living a fair to middling life can be frustrating, which you will definitely hear me rant about if you continue reading my blog, but it can also be something to embrace and feel really good about. Learning more about lagom really helped to teach me that. Lagom in a nutshell means not too much and not too little. Lagom means working hard to have a ‘good job’ but making sure you have time for yourself and your family, it means eating everything in moderation, it means if loads of exercise isn’t your thing then maybe get off the bus a stop early and get in a little bit of walking, it means not filling your wardrobe with loads of cheap throwaway items but mixing that with the odd more expensive piece that will last forever, it means doing what you can for the planet but not taking it so far that it controls your life.
Over the years I have really struggled with my identity, even at school I was the kid that flitted from group to group but didn’t really have an identity. I don’t have kids so I’m not in the mum group, I don’t work all the hours in the world for a 6 figure salary so I’m not in the rich workaholic group, I’m not a big gym girl so I’m not in the fitness group, I have always felt that I don’t have a ‘thing’ you know that ‘thing’ that defines me. Then one day I realised my thing is being fair to middling, having different groups of friends that like different things, working hard but not too hard etc. and actually that is pretty awesome.
Whilst being fair to middling is awesome I really hate that there aren’t more people like us represented on TV and in the media. I absolutely embrace diversity but I think these days it is all about extremes and I am not an extreme I am in the middle. I want a voice and I want other people who feel like me to have a voice too which is what prompted me to start this blog.
So if like me you struggled to fit in and find your ‘thing’ then you’re in good company and I’ll be writing a lot more about my fair to middling life and how wonderful it is but also how frustrating it can be. So say it with me, I am fair to middling and there’s nothing else I’d rather be!