It’s Valentine’s Day. Oh yay, you say. Or, oh, yay! you say. It depends. Maybe you’re single, maybe you’re part of a couple. If you’re in a couple, maybe the relationship is fresh and you’ve both been tiptoeing around the impending day lest the other person is more/less into it than you. Or maybe you’ve been together forever and are resistant to forcing romance on cue when no-one has got around to cleaning that burnt pot from Tuesday. Maybe you’re nearly in a couple, which is the worst way to be on this day. Awkward! Maybe you’re a millennial, acting nonchalant and pretending to cringe over the whole thing, or a Gen Z, ready to embrace it ironically in all its love-hearted-single-red-rosed glory, or maybe you’re a Gen X, huffing something something Hallmark holiday, as you trip over high school kids in the flower section of Woolies in the morning. You might be hopeful, or bracing for disappointment, or angry, or sad, or moody, or ambivalent. You might be anticipating hot sex, or contemplating no sex, and dreading the sex. You might be optimistic for a first I love you, or avoidant of the person you’ve been seeing because spending Valentine’s Day night together says more than you want it to (even if you actually want to). You might be preoccupied with punching that co-worker who always gets multiple bunches of flowers at work, even when Valentine’s Day falls on a weekend. You might consider investigating if she sends them to herself (affirmative). You might be feeling performative, or broke, or sweaty with the potential of it all. You might just be tired. This last part is almost certain; it is, after all, only February and the world is what it is.

But one thing is a universal truth: Valentine’s Day is the least romantic night of the year. I love love, but the things on my list of what I would rather do than go out to a fancy restaurant for dinner tonight are wide and varied. I could, for example, paint my own nails for the first time in a decade. Or, I don’t know, watch a documentary about cruise ship disasters. Read one-star reviews. Write a strongly worded email. Refresh a tracking number. Go deep into a Reddit thread about Hilaria Baldwin. Make a Pinterest board called ‘my future dogs’. Use a gua sha for possibly longer than is recommended. Debate the merits of various milk alternatives. Look up my high school nemesis on LinkedIn. Put all my husband’s exes in a tier-ranking system. Try to identify a mystery illness I might or might not have. Get forensic figuring out if an influencer is soft-launching a divorce. Get into an argument in a comments section. Start an expensive hobby I’ll abandon within 48 hours. Take a bath while listening to a podcast about cults. Google “am I in a cult”, referring to just my own children. Try and fail to meditate. Worry about microplastics. Wonder if I should be taking a supplement. Call my mum and let her tell me about people I don’t know. Read an entire week’s worth of posts on my suburb’s ‘what’s on’ Facebook group. Test every pen in my house and throw away the ones that don’t work. Take a quiz to find out which Bridgerton character I am despite having never watched the show. Finally look up lyrics to songs I’ve been singing wrong for years. Develop a fleeting but intense interest in the concept of van life. Watch a "What's In My Bag?" video from 2017. Plan an elaborate future revenge that I’ll never execute. Try to figure out if that noise in my house is normal or possums or the start of a slow structural collapse. Ponder why anyone becomes a Google Local Guide. The list is endless really…

Feel free to take my lead—no roses, no hearts, no degustations, and (happily) no expectations. Happy Valentine’s Day!

Justine x