This weekend my friends and I spent a disproportionate amount of time talking about the benefits of spiralizing, warm lemon water and adopting a plant-based diet while simultaneously drowning our organs in industrial quantities of cheap white wine. Is it just me or does Deliciously Ella have a lot to answer for? When did it become acceptable to preface your first name with an adverb? When did spaghetti become courgetti and since when was rice made out of cauliflower?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not disputing the virtues of veggies. Since watching that Netflix documentary, I have hardly eaten any meat (bar one chicken burger and a couple of ham croquettes) because it just doesn’t appeal as much. But I’m not really blogging about healthy eating. I think there are plenty of people more qualified on that topic than I am. What I am blogging about is how easy it is to feel inadequate. How easy it can be to assume that everyone around you is effortlessly excelling at life while your definition of a successful weekend is not losing any key belongings and ensuring you have some clean pants on a Monday morning.

I want to switch the narrative, from berating ourselves for our failings to celebrating our successes. And I’m not talking about achievements in terms of career success, or reaching your daily 10,000 step goal (ahem). I’m talking about all the efforts we make each day to think about others, to balance all our responsibilities, and to do the right thing. We do so many significant things every day which we devalue because we refuse to recognise them.

I haven’t written for a while, because I thought the end of my eight week experiment signalled the end of this blog. It was easier to put it aside than accept the continued challenge to keep going, to keep sharing, to abandon self-criticism and embrace honesty.

What I think I’m getting at, is that yes, it is very easy to succumb to pressure, to compare ourselves to others, or to believe that someone’s Instagram account really represents their life, all smiles and sepia tones. But that ultimately the pressure is self-inflicted. We choose the standard we judge ourselves by. I’m guessing you really don’t care that I haven’t blogged for a while, or that I ate an accidental chicken burger, or, shhhh….that never, have I ever spiralized a vegetable…