I’m going to be 34 soon, and it’s got me thinking about what being grown up means to me. It’s easy to know when someone isn’t acting in a grown up way, but I found it much harder to get an idea of what that actually involves. It’s not age. It’s not how much stuff I have managed to acquire. It’s not having a kid, or getting a mortgage.

Traditionally, being grown up meant leaving the parental home, getting a job so you were financially independent, getting married and raising a family. Things have changed – jobs are no longer for life and marriage is less important to a lot of people. So what is left?

From an afternoon reading various websites (studiously avoiding Yahoo Answers…) I have the following shortlist as markers of what I consider to be a grown up:

• Being financially independent – not on the dole or sponging off parents/partner/friends
• Ability to look after myself – cooking, cleaning, washing etc
• Emotional maturity – to identify and use emotions constructively, accept them and not be dragged around by them
• Interdependent relationships based on mutual respect and friendship rather than dependency
• Doing what needs to be done as well as what I want to do
• Taking responsibility for my behaviour and the consequences – this includes not whining about things I can change or blaming others for things I have chosen.

Curiously, I am doing OK with this list but still don’t feel like I have grown up! I met some of Beth’s friend’s parents last week and they all seemed like grown ups to me as they are of the previous generation. So is it more of a personality difference than something everyone hopefully achieves at some point? My next door neighbour is married with a career, mortgage and grown children, yet he is still flippant and playful. Maybe I will never feel grown up…

Come on, you’re not fooling anyone. Using stock photos of gorgeous models wearing telephone headsets to decorate your technical support pages is just lazy and stupid. Who started this trend? Here’s your P45.

Why not show the actual tech support people (Like Rackspace do) and build some humanity into your business? People will respond better if they see who they are talking to instead of some identikit dollybird in a headset that has been used on tons of other boring corporate websites.

ПРАВОСЛАВНАТА ИКОНА

A new Textpattern site for Nottingham driving instructor Gavin Pinfold launched this week, hosted on our newly upgraded green web hosting server.

Most driving instructors seem to try and make their own sites which look awful, so we jazzed it up a bit with floating transparent graphics, pictures of his driving school car and some recently passed students ripping up their L plates

Gavin’s a top bloke, so if you are looking to have a laugh while having great value driving lessons in nottingham, drop him a line.

матраци

I hate Cows, but heart Badgers.

I love coffee. I love the taste, I love coffee shops and the ritual of making it and I love the high that makes me feel like I am achieving more than I have ever achieved. And then I Crash And Burn.

Damn you coffee.