I’m 24 years old. I’ll be 25 in January. And yet, it doesn’t quite feel like I’m grown up enough to be 30 in 5 years.

I look at my friends, my colleagues, my ‘Facebook friends’ and they all seem to be a bit more ‘put together’ than I am.

It takes me forever to know what to wear, I never wear make-up; preferring to have an extra half hour in bed that to drag my ass to the mirror. I get my eyebrows waxed every couple of months when the regrowth looks like a caterpillar has crawled onto my face.
I don’t wear matching underwear sets. I prefer my husband’s t-shirts as PJ’s and there’s no way I’d cope in high heels. My jeans always have rips in the knees- I buy them that way! And instead of blouses I buy band or slogan tees – usually 2 sizes too big.

I was never a girly-girl growing up and I’m certainly not a girly-woman now but is that a bad thing? Just because I’m no longer at uni and I’m married and work for a living, I should drop all my principles and comforts and adopt new, more boring ones? Definitely not. Maybe they just need to be updated. My style should reflect my age and my tastes in a manner that expresses who I am.

I can still wear my band tees, still wear my ripped jeans, but in a way that will still be taken seriously in the adult world. Even though my maturity might be a little stunted, my values and prospects are very much adult. It goes back to that old saying: “Never judge a book by its cover”.

On first impression, I may look like a school drop out or a student that’s had too many all-nighters and not enough of her 5 a day. But I hope that once you speak to me and learn a smidge about who I am, it will become clear that I am a reasonable force, someone to be taken seriously, and someone who knows her own mind.

A xo