By Tommy Curran

I’ve stopped growing

The end of the year and indeed the decade has brought in a rash of reflection. Social media is full of glow ups from 2009 and 9 photo collages capturing the years highlights. Even technology is getting in on the act, with your favourite platforms shoving your poorly lit photography and even worse music tastes from the past ten years, down your throat.

Drawn in by social pressure I began to trawl through my own photos from the last year, attempting to draw together 9 that would nicely capture my flourishing and growth. But then I hit a snag.

Life, I have always assumed, is a linear if not exponential process of growth. A year passes, you get taller, better looking, smarter and happier. Progress, progress, progress. But what if the me from 12 months ago is better than the me before you now. Perhaps not on all those measures but some at least.

Scouring through a years worth of photos I realised that I was less happy now than I had been 12 months previously. A year ago I was living in a brand new country in a flat I rented with my own money. I was sun tanned and fit. I had a job and independence. I was 6 ft 2. Currently, I live at home with my parents in the same 3 square miles I have for most if my life, I am a student with no social life and I am completely out of shape. I am still 6 ft 2.

And I chose this. This sorry state was a conscious choice. But who would give up rock hard abs on Bondi for a drizzly Tuesday in SE26. Someone making a sacrifice to a greater cause I suppose. I have allowed SCA to gobble up every aspect of my life because I believe it will slingshot me out on the other side, racing towards things I desire. But I have been lazy.

SCA should be the most important thing in my life, but it shouldn’t be the only thing. I could have planned my time better. Gone to the gym in the morning. Organised seeing friends. Got a weekend job. But I didn’t. And so SCA feels like a totality and I feel worse.

So next year, which is to say tomorrow as I write this, I will listen to my diary. I will go to the gym before school. I will use Tuesday evenings to plan the weekend. I will find balance. And if I do, maybe looking through 2020’s photos will be a different experience.

Then again, perhaps I should stop looking to package, and then share to the world, my life in nine squares in one larger square aiming to capture what’s happened to me during one of the Earth’s full trips around the sun. Perhaps a life lived as a journey with no specific destination and certainly no time constraints would be a more fulfilling one. Perhaps.

SCA can and will change you. It is up to you to make sure that it is for the better.