Well, I had a lovely birthday, as it turned out.

It seemed to stretch over about ten days in all, what with the trip to Copenhagen, followed by a few days in Cornwall.

Oh, and there was a mini-celebration when I got home too, with presents from family and friends.

But now it’s all over and life settles back into it’s normal pattern.

I was going to post pictures of Copenhagen, but actually, I was too busy living the experience. And the few photos I did take were to remind me of the lovely time I had, rather than to show off.

This one was taken at the (not very good) flea market…

But, on some deeper level, I just didn’t feel any desire to share.

In fact, I’ve not been very interested in the internet world at all lately, apart from keeping up with people I know in real life.

I’ve had no taste for blogging, no interest in Pinterest, nothing to put on Instagram and no tweets worth twittering on about.

I’m not feeling down about it, there’s nothing really wrong, but I just seem to have no need for it all at the moment. I feel sort of satiated – both with reading / looking, and contributing.

Pinterest is now a mess of seen-it-all-before stuff (and adverts). Instagram feels over-styled. Facebook is an ever-accelerating treadmill. Everywhere I look, a cacophony of self-promotion jars my nerves and makes me feel cynical and cross. Neither of which I want to feel. And I don’t feel much like I want to add to it, either.

I also seem to have more or less stopped wanting to buy things. I rarely venture onto eBay any more, visit Etsy only occasionally to look for presents for others, and feel no need to browse fashion / homewares / random consumables websites that used to be regular haunts.

I didn’t even want to buy stuff in Copenhagen, despite it being full of former “objects of desire.” Which was only partly because everything was super-expensive.

My partner did buy me these fabrics though…

It’s as if my birthday was some kind of fulcrum, and reaching my half-century has effected a sort of tipping-point.

I’ve lived long enough to recognise, somewhere deep in my bones, that nothing is really new, and buying things does not make you happier, and the number of “likes” you get on the internet doesn’t mean anything really, in the big scheme of things.

Of course, I thought I knew this all along. But somehow this has translated itself into something different, helped along by a touch of overstimulation-induced ennui.

There seems to be a trend for “de-cluttering”, “pro-organising”, “slow-living” and other kinds of purging and soul-searching. In fact, there seems to be a whole industry developing around throwing things out and stopping doing things.

I don’t think how I feel is anything to do with that. Stuff is just stuff. It has only the power we assign to it. It’s what it brings to your life, how you feel about it, that matters. I’m not about to throw everything away and go and live in a cave. I’m just going to do what feels right.

So please forgive me if I am a little quiet for a while.

I am going to read books, do gentle exercise, cook dinners, nurture my sadly-neglected creativity and maybe do some sewing, if I feel the urge. No pressure.

I need to regroup, rethink and re-know myself, now that I have crossed that invisible tipping point.♥