Love, Cigars and Late Birthdays

It’s winter in Paris. My coffee cup is keeping me warm, along with my beret, snug gloves and cosy boots. I have the day to explore, before I go home and write my column. This is my happy place. Sometimes I visit it when I’m lost with my thoughts. But a few days ago, I visited another happy place: love, cigars and late birthdays.

It started with a message to my ex

We finally met up after more than a year apart and as I expected, our chemistry didn’t falter. So much had happened and the world had spun by, and yet there we were. Because he couldn’t make my actual birthday, he arranged for a couple of candled cakes to arrive at locations we went too.

I’m not quite sure if it felt like my birthday, though I had reason to celebrate.

A new job has meant I’m now working a full-time 9-5, with an awfully long commute. My failed attempts at creating blog drafts, meant I spent a week abandoning one of my favourite loves. No matter what goes on – there’s always my blog.

This new career path means writing for a cigar company. As a health freak, this is the last category I imagined my name associated with. It turns out however, that most of my office are health freaks to.

I smoked my first cigar

Ignoring my once failed attempt in Miami, I tried my hardest to look like I played a character in a 50’s gangster flick, only I looked like I was starring in a parody.

I guess if I become an actress, cigar smoking won’t be labelled as a hidden talent.

For most of my life, I’ve rebelled against my good-girl image. I’ve tried to pretend that I’m a little recklessly fun, and a little bad even outside the bedroom. But when I puffed on that cigar, it finally hit me. My life’s been spent overly sweet.

I don’t smoke, drink (minus a night every couple of months) and I frown upon the Tinder culture. I’ve never slept around or done anything too wild. Sometimes I’m pulled in situations where I lose my control, however, I’m losing control based on someone else’s choice. I’m merely a Pinocchio being shook on a string.

I started to wonder, how many times have I lived for me? Do I know what I want, or am I going along with expectations and presumptions on how one should be?

Love, cigars and free

The thing about my partner, is that when I’m with him, my brain flows freely like a bird. It’s like all the noise and pointless analysis which conjures time in my day, just suddenly stops. I switch off from feeling discontent or misplaced. Because I get restless easy.

I’m forever chasing perfection and trying to perfect my previous achievements. I’m continually trying to make myself more – never appreciating the progress or the journey I’m undertaking.

I have a soul – or a spirit, which wants to be one in a million. All the while, it tells itself there’s a million reasons I’m not one.

I suppose the biggest conundrum to a dreamer, is how to make their dreams live. How do we really fly free, when society wants to shackle us to reality? We’re told to find sensible jobs, to afford a sensible home, to raise sensible children, and hopefully make a sensible partner.

No one believes in the story of a girl with nothing but a dollar, until that girl is Madonna.

Love, cigars and birthday wishes

Choosing to reconnect with my now non-ex, is a decision no one has affected. I have 100% committed myself to doing that, in the same way I chose to create The Style of Laura Jane. There are not many things I can say I’ve done, purely with no persuasion.

So, my wish this year, along with love, cigars and late birthdays, is to make more personal decisions; find time to follow my sense of wild. Which maybe is a weekend break to Paris, or a spontaneous trip somewhere else.

Maybe it’s just to quieter the sound around me, and keep up with my dreamer mentality. After all, without my dreams, I wouldn’t be typing any of these words – they wouldn’t have happened, and neither would this blog.

What are your dreams this year? How many of your decisions are affected by other people?

If you love this post, read:

• 26th Birthday – My Life Rules have Changed
• Do Women Use Sex to Hide Mental Pain?
• The Ideal Life: Why We’re Dreaming Wrong