Grow up and do something silly this year

After I made a big deal in 2024 about not making New Year’s Resolutions, my sister-in-law roped me and her mum into hers for 2025.

Lest you worry, gentle reader, that I have been coerced into waking up at the crack of dawn to run hill sprints, let me reassure you that’s not the case.

It’s been a journey of spiritual growth – the kind you’d usually have to pay someone with a penchant for crystals and hallucinogens a lot of money for.

This is less ‘new year, new me’ and more ‘new year, old me’.

The life-changing resolution we three have agreed to is, once a week, we each have to do something childish.

Shared in the group chat, our antics have ranged from food fights to rollerblading in the house (you should definitely put a mattress at the end of the hallway), hula-hooping and colouring in.

It’s been fantastic.

It gives you permission to think of all the things kid-you imagined grown-up you would do without boring adults around to make rules and do them.

Shockingly, nothing terrible actually happens if you fling half a jam-and-cream sponge cake at your husband with your bare hands (as long as you warn him first, of course).

It hasn’t been all bun-fights and hula-hoops, though.

Once you scratch the surface of “childish” a whole world opens up – the silliness of dancing in the shower, and the fear of trying things you’re not sure you can do.

One of my most unpleasant childhood memories is of Nippers carnivals.

I was not a fast swimmer. Strong, yes; fast, no.

Whenever we went away to competitions, I’d slog away at the swim events, falling further and further behind the other kids until it was just my head bobbing around out in the ocean.

When I finally made it in, I had the final run up the beach by myself, with nowhere to hide.

As an adult, any swimming I do is purely for fun, so when my best mate asked me to jump into the Wollongong Aquathon with her, my first answer was a firm ‘no’.

My second, third and fourth answers were also ‘no’, but I’m a sucker for peer pressure, so by the fifth ask, I said yes. At least it could count as my weekly childish activity.

Visions of chubby, 12-year-old me lagging behind, alone and self-conscious, filled my head for the weeks beforehand.

It turns out that being an adult really is much better than being a kid in lots of ways.

Everyone at the Aquathon was super friendly and encouraging. There were bodies of all ages, genders, shapes and sizes having a crack.

The group of friends I was with waiting for each other after the swim (in a shock twist, I was not the last one out of the water) slowed down during the run and cheered each other on the whole way.

The six of us ran over the finish line together as the commentator pumped up our very average efforts.

Afterwards, we got hot chips and a beer.

If that’s not healing my inner child, I don’t know what is – no mushroom shakes or amethysts required.