It's Claire as mud

Several years ago, I remember telling my manager in an annual review that I didn’t really believe in five year plans and she was horrified.  She was a wonderful manager; full of tough love, bad handwriting, a kind heart and she put up with me saying obnoxious rot like that.  The poor woman.  And although I’m still not a huge believer in long term planning, because anything could happen really, I definitely believed in non-plans, or things I thought I would never do.

But that has gone to poop recently, because while never have I ever played the famous drinking game; lately I’ve found myself doing quite a few things I never thought I would do.

Here are just a few:

• Sitting in lecture theatres where approximately 90% of the attendants are exactly half my age probably tops the list. But then again, I never fully morphed into the PR power bitch I thought I’d one day become, so it was time to retrain to become a podiatry power bitch.
  

  Oh Billy Madison, I feel your pain

• Working from home. Because I lacked discipline and the idea of pyjamas being appropriate workwear was so appealing, I was perhaps not the best candidate for this arrangement.  However, an opportunity presented itself, and it has meant the transition to superannuated uni student has been relatively painless.  And I surprised myself that I actually did the work and changed out of my pyjamas to do it… most days. In Skype meetings my hair might say ‘brushed and straightened’, but my feet say ‘Peter Alexander’.
• Working as a promo girl. Although the term ‘girl’ is probably a bit generous in my case.  A friend of a friend of mine runs a very successful PR/marketing company and needed some assistance with promotion at a large Brisbane shopping centre over the Christmas holidays.  It required the ability to smile, repeat the same information up to 100 times a shift and look sympathetic and concerned when members of the public decided to whine about the centre charging for parking.  Well go and park your four-wheel drive Beamer somewhere else, princess.  It also paid almost as much per hour as I earned when I managed a team of nine people.  So I’m not particularly embarrassed that I was the oldest promo person there – the other team members could have possibly been my children if I’d been a more interesting teenager – because it was the easiest money I have ever made.
• Worrying less about what certain people think about me. While promo-ing – yes it’s a new word, look it up – I ran into quite a few people I knew, but only one from school, which I sort of dreaded happening.  Going to one of Brisbane’s most high-achieving, sports-loving, academic-butt-kicking, doctor/lawyer-churning-out institutions does not make the transition to promo-girl the most obvious choice for one of its former students.  So when a school-colleague (mate would be taking it WAY too far) stumbled upon me while doing her Christmas shopping she seemed quite stunned.  She asked with great disdain if this is what I ‘did’.  Maybe it was the fact she was dressed atrociously.  Maybe it was because she had lipstick on her teeth.  Maybe it was because my eyeliner was on fleek that day.  Maybe it was the fact I’m a completely shallow cow… but I approached that encounter without a need to justify myself or explain what I was doing and little interest in what she ‘did’.  Although I do admit googling her later, so perhaps she got to me a bit, but she and her large backside don’t need to know that.
• Forgetting to attend a professional development webinar, for which I willing forked out my own money. I never forget meetings!
• Willingly forking out my own money for a professional development webinar instead of a pair of leopard print shoes that were 30% off on Click Frenzy. Being sensible and responsible is so dull.
• Thoroughly enjoying a cleaning microfiber party and spending almost $200 on cleaning products in one go. No, I hadn’t been drinking.  I probably would have ended up buying the entire very photogenic Norwegian family featured in the catalogue if I had been.
• Doing tequila shots at the age of 36 and then crawling across a banquette Beyonce-style because I thought all of my friends needed to see my choreography to ‘Crazy in Love’, even though I think Queen Bey has jumped the shark big time. I’m not really worried though. I’m pretty sure I looked amazing while I was doing it.
  

  It must be hard to slay in those tiny pants, Bey.

• As mentioned above, fall out of love with Beyonce. Sorry, but using feminism as your key marketing tool while slagging off your cheating husband does not sit right with me. Cheating didn’t seem to worry you when you were ‘Jumpin’ Jumpin’’, Queen Bey.  Yes, I be one of them haters you twirl on, but I’ll get over it.  My love for Kylie Minogue and Prince, however, will remain eternal.

I guess it’s nice to know you can surprise yourself sometimes, even if it’s not always in a good way.  You think I’m talking about the tequila drinking and Beyonce dancing, right?  You would be wrong.  I was thinking about the webinar.  So what things have you done, that you’d never thought you’d do?