One Minute You Are Young & Fun…

The strange, quiet shift from being the girl who stayed out late to the woman who builds strength at sunrise

There’s a video of me deadlifting that I posted recently with an overlay of ‘one minute you’re young and fun and the next you’re up at 6am deadlifting your bodyweight listening to music you used to dance to’, and a caption that says, “but I’m still cool right?” It was meant as a joke, but like most jokes, it was only half in jest. Because somewhere between being the version of myself who stayed out too late, danced in kitchens, and thought sleep was optional, and the version of me who now sets an alarm for 6am to lift heavy things before most people have decided to be awake; something changed.

Not in a dramatic way. No single moment where I woke up and decided I was done being that ‘whimsical’ girl. It was slow. Subtle. It looked like responsibilities stacking up. My Body changing. Priorities rearranging themselves without asking permission. Putting my health at the centre of my mind. It looked like choosing strength over spontaneity more often than not, and not even noticing when that became the default.

And yet, the tunes are still the same. That’s the part that gets me. I’ll be under a barbell listening to a song that used to mean pre-drinks and eyeliner at my friends’ place. Now it means bracing my core, setting my feet, clearing my mind, and moving something heavy because I can. Same soundtrack, different life.

This is where my cheeky question of “cool” sneaks in. If cool used to mean carefree, late nights, playing hard, and not thinking too much about consequences; then this version of me doesn’t qualify as cool… not by a long shot. But that definition feels a bit flimsy now. A bit like it only worked when I didn’t have to carry so much (literally and figuratively).

A quieter definition of cool started to show up for me. It looked like consistency when nobody was watching. It looked like choosing hard things early in the morning so the rest of the day feels easier. It looks like being strong enough to carry your life.

What I didn’t expect is how much nostalgia would show up in my training. Not sadness exactly, more like a recognition. A kind of meeting point between who I was and who I am now. The girl who once out sang an Elvis impersonator isn’t gone. She just lifts now. She still shows up in the music, in the rhythm, in the refusal to make everything purely about discipline and nothing about joy.

And maybe that’s the real story of my ‘coolness’. Not that I stopped being fun, but 'that kind’ of fun stopped being the thing I was trying to achieve.

There’s something almost grounding about realizing you don’t need to choose between versions of yourself. You can be the person who remembers the energy of a crowded dance floor right before closing and also the person who gets excited about early morning empty gyms. You can be both nostalgia and structure. Both softness and strength.

So when I ask “I’m still cool right?” it’s not really a question I need answered anymore. It’s more like I’m checking in with an old definition to see if it still fits. And it doesn’t. Not because I’ve become less, but because the definition of cool got too small.

If anything, this version of me is more anchored. Less performative. Less interested in proving anything to anyone who isn’t paying attention to the work it takes to feel good in your own body and life. Fun in my terms.

And if that doesn’t look like the kind of cool I used to recognize, I’m okay with that. Because I’ve learned something that younger me didn’t know yet: there’s a kind of freedom that comes from being strong enough to carry yourself without apology. And that is its own kind of fun.