Doing things properly

When I first thought about writing a blog, I wanted to do an advice one called Is It One?, based on an old inside joke ( ripped from Friends, I think) among onetime Wansteaders Kara, Rowan and I. To clarify, asking “Is It One?” is to check if something is socially acceptable. So, I thought it might be good to create a kind of modern Miss Manners for social queries and other dilemmas. Anyway, that didn’t happen, because I didn’t actually fancy being an imperious advice-mistress – well, not on the interwebs. As you can see, this here blog has ended up as a much broader collection of things that I reckon. But, this is all a long preamble to a blog which does this grown-up advice job far better than I ever could, called Adulting.

Adulting aims to help readers “become a grown-up in 387 easy (ish) steps”, through a series of posts inspired by everyday issues and dilemmas, and also readers queries. The funny and honest steps include everything from the seemingly-obvious-but-rarely-enacted rules of  If You Must Break Up With Someone, Be Decent About It to the no-nonsense Find Some Sort Of Physical Activity Or Exercise You Can Live With and Figure Out How To Take Care Of Your Yard or charming Create Your Own Traditions.

This pursuit of ways to do things properly has led the blog to be turned into a book, available on Amazon. And with the difficulties of becoming a grown-up demonstrated to great acclaim in Girls, this pursuit is sure to populate newspaper features for months to come. I could get into a whole socioeconomic thing about changing routes and boundaries to growing up, but I shan’t. Let’s just say, coming-of-age stories are always popular because they’re at the meeting point of awkward and hilair. Also, I think a lot of people worry that they have no idea what they’re doing (I certainly do), and it’s always reassuring to know that no-one else really does either! To prove the point, there are now rumours that Adulting has been picked up for development by JJ Abrams as a TV show for Fox.