THERE ARE SOME FAMILY MEMBERS I ONLY EVER SEE AT FUNERALS!
I turn 40 on Monday – eek! It’s funny how landmark birthdays and anniversaries always seem to have more of an impact on the level of celebration and significance. After all, it’s just another year. My favourite thing about birthdays with a zero in them is that it’s an excuse to throw a big party, which I’ll be doing next week. I love being able to get friends and family together for a good night out and a proper chinwag – from Elvis chats with my great-aunt Deirdre to college reminisces with my old classmates. It’s so hard to find time to see everyone – as responsibilities grow, time seems to shrink and socialising loses its status in the priority list. There are some members of my family I only ever see at funerals and we always promise to arrange a night out but it rarely happens. So it’s vital to take every chance we can to get together and have fun. I always thought I’d be traumatised by the idea of turning 40 but I’m in a brilliant place in my personal life and happy in my career so it’s definitely a time to be embraced rather than shunned. I think our teens and 20s are such a quagmire of trying to work out what we want to do with our lives, then our 30s are spent putting it into action. By our 40s, we’re much more self-aware, have built up the confidence to banish negative influences and are either happy with our choices or savvy enough to make new ones if they’re not working out the way we wanted them to. So I’m ready to embrace my zero-year birthday – mine’s a champagne!
The world of influencers has been coming under increasing scrutiny of late – if you haven’t seen the Netflix documentary about the Fyre Festival, it’s definitely worth a watch. It shows how influencers often post something they’ve been paid for without looking into the detail. It’s an extreme example but there’s no doubt that some have been duped into supporting a product or event that is not the right fit for their followers. So it’s refreshing to hear from Roz Purcell in today’s cover story on page 20 that she has made a conscious decision to only work with brands that she understands and can identify with. I think influencers are a great addition to the world of information dissemination but they have to abide by rules of honesty and disclosure if they are going to use their message to, well, influence people. Kudos to Roz for taking great strides in this.
Enjoy the issue!