The
struggle to find a little sweetness in days that can be super sour...
Do you remember the sweet shops of your
childhood Dear Reader? They seemed so big, didn’t they? I remember walking into
a Sweets From Heaven when I was about nine years old and actually feeling like
I was in Heaven. Now, that might have had something to do with the fact that I
was pretty chubby growing up. I mean, I was quite a porker. The kids at school
used to call me the “Leg of Ham” and pretend the ground was shaking when I
walked past them in the corridors... that’ll mess you up. But I digress...
I remember the shop being packed
wall-to-wall with sweets and chocolates in every colour; lollipops, candyfloss,
fudge, brownies, gummy bears, jelly tots... sweet dispensers lined the walls
and they even had a Slush Puppy machine and an ice-cream section. I didn’t know
which sweets to scoop into my little brown bag first but I felt overwhelmed and
excited and a little sense of carpe diem all at once.
Thinking back to that day (and many other
days of my childhood) I can’t help but wish that I could return to a time where
my biggest problem was a scrape on my knee and there was nothing in the world
that a Baker’s Lemon Cream couldn’t fix.
But I can’t go back. I’m a grown-up now
and there are far bigger problems to face than I ever could have imagined when
I was standing in that Sweets From Heaven. Because life is a bit like having a
brown bag at a sweet shop, except we don’t always have the luxury of choosing
what lands up in our bag. Sometimes it feels like the sweet shop owner has
grabbed your brown bag and thrown a few handfuls of pick ‘n mix in there and
you just have to deal with whatever you find... and you won’t know what that
might be until you dig around and pull out a mint humbug that you had hoped
would be a strawberry bonbon. But that’s just the way it goes; it’s luck of the
draw.
I think we make a lot of our own luck
but I also think that things work out just
as they should. Maybe it’s fate, destiny, serendipity or whatever it’s called.
Maybe you’re like me and you believe it’s all part of God’s plan. Or maybe you
don’t think anything of it at all. Either way, life’s full of little twists and
turns and I like to think that the trick to finding happiness is finding a
little bit of sweetness in every day, no matter how small. Someone once said
that every day might not be good but there’s something good in every day... and
I think that “someone” is a splendid bugger!
Say what you like about how “if you do
what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life” – that’s crap. No matter
what you do to make a living and pay the bills, there are going to be days
where you’re seriously going to consider packing up your life and opening a
small ice-cream stand on a beach in Greece instead. But let’s be honest, even that job would start to bug you after a
while. I mean, I have a job where I don’t use my editing skills at all. I do
something completely different to what I studied and sometimes I feel frustrated
by that because I don’t get to be creative. Then I get asked to help out with
editing marketing collateral and I get really excited about that... until I realise
how irritating it is to have to rewrite an entire document (without getting
paid for it) because people are too lazy and careless to use decent spelling
and grammar. So even when I win, I lose.
The working world is a tricky thing; it’s
not all bad but it sure as hell isn’t all good! The only thing I can compare it
to is those situations where people say things like, “He’s a nice guy once you
get to know him”... Now, to me, that’s just a great way to say, “He’s an
asshole but you’ll get used to it”. Yeah, work is pretty much an asshole that
you get used to. You go in and put in your best effort (at least, you should be putting in your best effort)
but at the end of the day, no matter if you love your job or hate it, you’d
rather be sipping a cocktail on the beach.
However, getting back to finding a
little bit of sweetness in every day, even a work day, you can easily find
something about your job that you love. For me, it’s the people I work with and
the fact that I’m earning my stripes helping out with important projects. I
haven’t been a working girl for too long but I’ve grabbed the opportunity to
learn a lot of different skills with both hands and I’m lucky enough to have supportive
colleagues who are always keen to share their knowledge of the working world with
me. We also share in a few chuckles throughout the day and that really eases my
stress and makes coming to the office something that I look forward to.
Since joining the working class, I’ve
also learned to be grateful for the little things in life. Small things that I
always took for granted seem to bring me great joy now and that keeps me
humble. Even as I sit here in my tiny lounge typing away and listening to happy
tunes on my iPod over the constant humming of my rather frail, old laptop I am
grateful to have a laptop, a tiny lounge
and a place to rest my head. I’m grateful to have a tummy full of home-cooked
food and a beautiful sunset to look at. I have a loving and supportive family,
the most fabulous friends a girl could ask for and a Greek who loves me and
proves it every day. I don’t have much money, a fancy car, or a great many
things... but at the end of the day, the best things in life aren’t things.
In short, I am blessed. And you probably
are too. So dig around in your brown bag and let the Strawberry Fluffs, Fruity
Chews and Rolos in your life know just how sweet they are. Today might’ve been
a sour worm but tomorrow brings the promise of new hope and a fresh start. I
don’t know about you Dear Reader, but I’m going to march into tomorrow like a
kid in a sweet shop and do my best to carpe
the crap out of that diem!
