Finding That Inner Strength

women, ,

I met a really wonderful young woman yesterday through the course of my job and I can’t tell you how much I admire her.

Immediately I found her to be very professional, very on-the-ball and very easy to talk to. After we had dealt with most of the “work” stuff we started to just chat. As we talked about Christmas I discovered she really has had a year from hell, with the loss of one parent in January and the illness of the other now. On top of that she is covering another persons sick-leave in her job, meaning a lot more travelling than usual.

At no point did she have a “poor me” thing going on, though God knows I could have understood if she did. She called it for what it was, ” A Shit Year”, and yes, it had knocked seven bells out of her, but then she went on quickly to talk about the positives; she had recently moved house which meant she now lives opposite her sick parent, how she loves the opportunities the travel in her work has brought her, and her great husband and how much support he has given, ( she met him while volunteering for a support group for a chronic illness, one she has suffered from since the age of nine).

This wonderful woman chose to take a positive perspective wherever she could and accepted the awful things she could not change, no matter how much she may have wanted to. Quite inspirational !

I hope she reads this and I hope I can be more like her. Well done CE.

Back to That Sunday Night Feeling

Life Stressors, The Weekend

Fair enough, I have a busy day tomorrow, but not anything I don’t actually enjoy doing so why oh why do I dread it sooooo much?

And, I have actually achieved quite a lot of the “stuff” I had hoped to so, again, why can’t I get my head space sorted?

If I could answer this one I think I would publish it and retire on the proceeds. That would be a very neat way out…………no more Sunday night feelings! Or maybe not..

Okay all you retired folks; do you still get this, or did it cease the day you handed in your work passes, company cars and fringe benefits??

 

The Promise of a Sunday Morning

The Weekend, work-life balance

I prefer Sunday mornings to any other time of the week. I absolutely love this time; the indulgence of reading the papers with several cups of coffee, making plans for what I am going to accomplish through the rest of the day ( even though I would usually need the ability to bend time in order to achieve everything) or maybe, sometimes, deciding that the most I am going to accomplish is to sit on my backside and watch old movies, the type that used to be called the “Sunday Matinee” when I was a child.

It’s the not having to do anything that counts and I can get really bothered if arrangements are made for Sundays. I feel robbed and, regardless of how wonderful those arrangements turn out to be, I start my working week feeling tired and out of sorts.

And of course at this time of year you have the fire lit, it’s cold and raining outside, and is there a better place to be than warming your toes in front of your own hearth with a full day of suiting yourself ahead??

Okay………..mine isn’t quite as idyllic as that either BUT I generally don’t mind the washing, cleaning and ( to-day) decorating, because I’m not trying to fit it all in around a full-time job as well!

The smell of a fresh pot of coffee is wafting through the house now, Miss Marple is sleuthing away on the TV and the washing machine has just stopped. Oh but the simple pleasures are the best!

 

A Touch of The Good Life

Life Stressors, The Weekend, work-life balance,

I have had the most beautiful experience to-day; a wonderful facial with a neck, shoulder and foot massage. It was heaven on earth and I think the lovely beautician, Hannah, has hands that are a gift from God !

This was a great Christmas present; last Christmas !

I wonder why I have put this off for so long, almost in fact until the gift voucher ran out of date. Why do so many women I know do the same thing? I think part of it, for me anyway, is the knowledge and comfort of having a bit of indulgence just a booking away, with no guilt attached as it is all paid for.  It’s like having an escape route at your finger tips, even if it is only for half a day, or an hour and a half like mine to-day.

The smells and soothing sounds, along with the wonderful Hannah, helped take the wrinkles out of my neck, shoulders, face and, most importantly, my mind. In this indulgent atmosphere I was able to take a more charitable and understanding view of the various happenings during the week. The feeling of peace allowed me to take a step back and look into my life from the outside, offering another perspective of different situations and, potentially, different solutions. This I reckon is the “peace” that so many of my friends, men and women, are searching for. It’s like switching off the white noise in your head.

Some people tell me you can train yourself to find this in your day-to-day life through meditation or “mindfulness”. I don’t know but I suppose I could try……. OR maybe I’ll just bring Hannah home with me!!

 

Any Sign of Christmas With You?

Christmas Gifts, Uncategorized, women

Having a lovely chat with a friend of mine to-day, as we both waited at a mutual customers premises. She was joined by a male colleague and we got to chatting about buying Christmas presents for partners/spouses.

He commented that in 12 years of marriage he has never been able to buy his wife a gift that she has appreciated. In fact she tells them they are terrible gifts ( and that’s the polite version). Last year he paid for himself, his wife and their child to go to Disneyland on holiday and, yes, he did admit that he had really wanted this holiday a lot too. This did not go down well.

I asked him how he felt about buying presents for his wife now and he agreed that he accepted it was never going to be “right” so he just bought something he will enjoy as well. Mmmm, I thought.

It reminded me of a VERY quiet Christmas in our house; the Christmas my husband bought me a set of mats for my car,…..apologies, TAILORED mats for my car. I wondered for the few days before Christmas day what he could possibly have wrapped in such a big, flat package. Funnily enough, car mats were not top of the bloody list!

As the QUIET day wore on and , bless him, his genuine confusion as to my lack of enthusiasm continued, he suddenly remembered another “little something” he had bought me. As he passed me the gift he smiled, ” Sorry love, I forgot about this.”

“Ohhhh, thank God,” I thought. ” He does love me.”

It was a tin of touch-up spray paint for the car !! Seriously.

This is a “Men are from Mars and women are from Venus” moment and he still, some fifteen years later, does not see why I didn’t love this gift. So do you know what?? As he loved the idea of this sooooo much I think I know what he’s getting for Christmas this year.

Common Decency?…..I wish !

Life Stressors,

How many times have you heard someone say, ” Well it’s just common decency….”

What do you think? How commonly do you find “decency” in your daily life?

I’m very lucky. I think I meet decency on a pretty regular basis but, sadly, not as much as perhaps I could. It seems to have gone out of fashion a bit; perhaps a bit “soft” now. How tragic that shock/horror have taken over and what will that mean for society?

That’s not difficult to answer when you look around. And yet…….

Now and again I see the green shoots of a return to the standards I remember from years gone by and, funnily enough, from the very age group you may have thought guilty of trashing the idea of “decency”. Perhaps the “shock factor” has become as boring and old hat as anything else given time. Perhaps young ones are looking at Miley’s “Twerking” and thinking “Oh, that’s so yesterday love. Get over it !”

A good friend of mine places being “decent” to one another, whether in business or private, above almost anything else and I’m inclined to agree. You don’t have to love or even like a person to behave decently towards them and wouldn’t that make for a better society, a decent one!

It’s the Small Stuff that Makes you Sweat!

Life Stressors

I understand, honestly I do. Take care of the big things in life and let the “small stuff” take care of itself.

But it’s the “small stuff” that gets you!!

I can get my head around the major decisions/issues, take time to compose my thoughts and sort out my coping mechanisms and then, the minutiae, the day-to-day dross, just knocks me on my ass. It sucks the life out of you and you think,

“Ugh, just kill me now.”

I suppose though, even this “stuff” can actually be spilt into two camps; the unavoidable crap that just IS, and the mind-numbing, nerve jangling shit that some people dream up and attach a huge importance to, as if to justify their existence.

It’s the futility of it all that is so frustrating. Each thing may be so petty, so insignificant and yet, when they all pile up, the effect can be shattering.

For Christmas I’m going to ask for an “Auto-Delete” button in my head, so I can discard this life-draining bilge before it gets a chance to ruin another day.

Thoughts on “10 hours walking in NYC” video

harrassment, women

I have replied to a few blogs on various aspects of this video and it has brought to mind some of the many instances I have  experienced, throughout my life, of this type of behaviour from men.

The time, place and context of each occasion made a huge difference to my reaction, depending on whether I felt afraid, embarrassed or just plain pissed off.

It’s funny though how at the time I thought a lot of it was just a fact of life and had to be put up with. Now that I have two daughters of my own though, and also because of a lot of hard work by women’s groups world-wide, I feel quite differently.

I can take a “joke” with the best of them but unfortunately there are still too many men getting away totally inappropriate behaviour and passing it off as “having a laugh”.

It seems that having a penis, even if it is coming out of the middle of their foreheads, still gives SOME men a feeling of superiority.

Far be it from me to say…….but

The Weekend, work-life balance,

It’s the early hours of Saturday morning and I’m feeling really chilled, the best part of the weekend because it’s all in front of you. Brilliant.

It has been a stinker of a week but, thanks to my fantastic mates ( male and female) I am still in one piece and have not throttled anyone as yet. It’s all good. I am calm, peaceful and at one with the world. I have decided not to stress about work, unfairness, people being idiots (ahh, bless), my kitchen being a shit-hole every time I come home ( he’s baking Christmas puds  ‘cos I’m not quite fat enough yet), the dog rolling in crap when you let her out ( looovvvely)…..you know what I mean, you get the picture. Well, none of that bothers me any more because I have found the path to inner harmony…………………….

Eh, I don’t bloody think so!  No.

At least not all of it. I actually have at last got my head around some of my work related stress and for now that is an incredible relief, it really is, and maybe that’s enough. I can never imagine myself being ” at peace” with the WORLD ( neither could anyone that knows me); there is just too much shit going on out there to find peace with all of it at the same time. But, “A” peace in “any” part of your life is a blessing, and so are those that help you find it!

Thanks guys. Love you.

 

Let’s hear it for the guys!!

Uncategorized

I was chatting to a lovely guy to-day and we got to talking about “Movember” and raising awareness of Prostate Cancer. He remarked how women are great at talking to each other about “Women’s Issues” but how men were some way behind on this. A few local men had tried to have meetings to discuss matters relating to health, both physical and mental, for other men in the area but it didn’t get off the ground.

Now I know only to well how brilliantly women do at this kind of thing nowadays, but it wasn’t always so. I am old enough to remember when Breast Cancer started being talked about very openly, and my mother wincing at “Breasts” being talked about so brazenly. It’s not her fault; that was the era she was brought up in. It seems to have been better to have literally died of ignorance back then, than mention any part of normally covered by your underwear!

This is where I become a bit of a hypocrite though. If I have to watch one more God-forsaken advert showing some pole-vaulting, half-naked dolly bird, telling me how absorbent her tampon is I am going to get a penis transplant! Enough already; we get it!