Living the dream?

I’ve always wanted to write. That is to say, until recently, I wanted to be a writer. The actual writing part was a whole separate thing. Back then, I wanted I wanted to travel the world and sit in cafes, sipping on a bottomless cups of coffee, bashing out bestsellers. But oh, the writing part is really hard and in the past was always where my dream of being a writer fell apart.

Who knew? 😉

In my 20s, I had a friend who owned a restaurant. I’d just returned from my second or third trip to Paris and was attempting to write about it, so I thought it would be cool to sit in her restaurant and write. She thought it was great too but before I could get there, her whole life fell apart. She found out her business partner had been taking a detour via the casino with the takings each week . Not only did they have no money but they owed serious coin to the tax office.

My dream of sitting and writing in a friend’s restaurant, drinking subsidised coffee and becoming a minor celebrity was over. Much more importantly, her life, marriage, and dream of being a successful restauranteur was in tatters.

It’s embarrassing that I only recently twigged, like really got it, that you are what you do, not what you say you’ll do. Writers write. Yeah, no shit, Sherlock.

“You are what you do, not what you say you’ll do.”

― Carl Gustav Jung

In the end we are the sum of all our parts, the good, the bad and the lazy. We get what we give…

But then life happens, doesn’t it? Accidents happen. A young friend just had his life turned upside down. Business changes. People don’t always pay their bills. You trust the wrong people, like my friend with the restaurant. Sometimes you work your butt off and get nowhere and sometimes you get really lucky.

Another friend turned up at work on Monday to be told their job now belonged to someone in another country. I mean, they couldn’t tell the staff on Friday? The whole local staff flushed down the toilet.

So what do you do? Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and get on with it. We pivot. We rest and recover. We monitor our thoughts, rely on our words to inform our actions. No matter what life dishes up, our habits and values will guide us.