Meryl Streep Terrified Me. Here's How.

As I write this, I am sitting in a cafe by myself, eating a caramel slice and sipping a chocolate milkshake. I'm not waiting on anyone to arrive, nor do I want anyone to eat with. I'm simply enjoying alone time. I'll be honest with you; I've never done this before. I've sat alone in cafe's; but always waiting for someone to arrive as I have a crippling fear of being late so am always a decade early. I'm working on that. I'm working on being spontaneous, carefree, and in all honesty, a little wild. This all started at the end of last year. I had heard George Ezra's song 'Shotgun' on television and was hooked. I then YouTubed every other one of his songs and they all had a common theme. Being free, not caring and being alarmingly unstressed. I wanted to be like that. Why aren't I like that? Why am I the type of person who plans their weekly outfits down to the knickers and scrunchie every Sunday? I needed to learn how to let loose and live before it was too late. So as all Type A people do, I stressed. Hard. I made my friend's take me swimming at the creek for the first time in my life (it terrified me as when I finally made it in, my best friend decided to warn me about the eels. Cheers.) I mentally planned all the trips I couldn't afford and then got disappointed when I came to terms with that. Once university break was over I went straight back into my routine of study, class, lunch, nap, and study again. Then, on a relaxing Friday night, I sat down to rewatch 'Mamma Mia!' and was confronted by a free-spirited Meryl Streep living her best life on a Greek Island. Sure, she had her ups and downs but she was living the life I wanted.

And now, here I am. Googling obsessively 'how to be spontaneous' and 'how to be a free spirit'. I even polled my Instagram followers on how to be spontaneous (you can follow me here) and was interested by what I found. They were small things like drive to a town I've not been to before and find a cafe. Or to go camping (an inside joke between the group of friends who took me to the creek. I'm not a camping kind of girl!) Now I'm learning that being spontaneous and enjoying life doesn't have to always be jumping out the back of a plane or quitting your job and backpacking through Europe. It can be small and quiet and still just as special.

So, this morning I woke up at 6.30am, put on my sneakers, and went for an hour long walk across town in the Autumn air. I stopped and spoke to people having their morning coffee on their verandah or waiting for their carpool to work. I went to a cafe and ate alone. And now I'm heading home to do my study.

I'm still in a crisis and want to do it all out of fear of a mundane life, but thanks to Meryl and her fabulous overalls, I've decided to take you along for the ride. I'll be posting about how I get out of comfort and how you can too. Hopefully this blog will hold me accountable so I don't fall back into the lull I was in. I want to be wild in all aspects of life. I want to dress so unique that people stop and stare. I want to eat exotic foods and learn to do outrageous makeup. I want to live my life to the absolute fullest. I want to go camping.