LIFE IS GREAT

When I was 5 years old I couldn't wait to be 8 so I could go swimming with all my school friends.
Life will be great then, I thought.
When I was 8 I always wished to be 13 so I could play in the park I knew to be the furthest away from my home.
Life will be great then, I thought.
When I was 13 I longed to be 17 so I could drive a car and travel to different places.
Life will be great then, I thought.
When I was 17 I couldn't wait to turn 19 so I could flock the nest and enjoy the university lifestyle.
Life will be great then, I thought.
When I was 19 I couldn't wait to be 23 so I could get a job, get my own place, and finally have money of my own to spend.

Life will be great then, I thought.

And then I turned the age of 23, and I stopped.
I stopped and I began to ponder over the subject.

Are we ever completely happy?

It's great to have goals.
I have many of them.
But are we able to just be happy and content with what we have now?
Is being comfortable in life actually uncomfortable for us to deal with?

Things will be perfect when I get my dream job.
Things will be perfect when I meet my ideal partner.
Things will be perfect when I get married.
Things will be perfect when I have kids.
Things will be perfect when I get the keys to my idyllic family home.
Things will be perfect when the kids grow up and leave.

It's a never ending spiral.
No matter where we are or how much or little we have, we seem to want more.
And more.
Perfection is imperfection, right?

We wish our time away, without actually stopping to pause for a moment and look at what's around us. Yet we look back at our memories and wish to go back to that moment in time.

I'm 25 now.
And that's it.
I ride the storm and enjoy what is now.
I stop, regularly and just enjoy the wonderful world around me; good and bad - for I know that this moment isn't going to last forever.

My family, my friends, my health and my happiness is all here.

I might not have all the money, I might not have the nicest apartment, the fastest car, or my dream home, but to me, I am the richest woman in the world.

EXPRESS YOURSELF

Can we really, truly express ourselves over digital platforms?

Text messages.
Emails.
Blog posts.
Social networking sites.

No matter how advance technology becomes, will we ever be able to communicate as accurately and as effectively as talking to one another face to face?

Sarcasm is something that isn't so easy to understand through digital mediums.
More offen than not, it can be misleading, cause offense, or just baffle the person reading it.
There isn't a specific typeface we all understand as being the typeface you use for when you want to be sarcastic.
There isn't a particular font weight that immediately suggests we are 'joking around'.
So can we always be clear about what we say?

The reader can find themselves second guessing.
'What was he meant to say?'
'Was that really a joke?'

Or we can spend a lot of our time explaining ourselves.
'What I really meant to say was...'
'How it was supposed to be read was...'

In that space of time, what we actually said in the first place, slowly turns into something not even worth all the effort explaining.
So we move on.
It no longer matters.
We forget it.

After going backwards and forwards, the inevitable always happens.

You come home from work and sit and chat with your wife.
You catch up with friends over a pint in the pub.
You finally go for a coffee with the person you've been emailing all week.

And we all sit and relay the things we talked about over text message, over email, over Facebook or Twitter.
We clarify, we explain.
We tell the story again.

Only this time, we can really tell it.

We've create the right mood, we've set the right tone.
Our stage is ready, and our audience is listening.