Appreciating.

I think when you don't wake up and feel excited for your day that you start to get a bit complacent. You start to get a bit annoyed with the fact you're a bit overweight, or the jobhunt is still as bleak as it ever was. You start to get a bit neutral with things, thinking that they're not great, but they're not that terrible either. You tend to forget how much people love you, and how many great things surround you in your life.

I guess I've just got to thinking about appreciating what I have, and well looking after what I have and keeping it to be what I want it to be and not let it slip just because I don't have absolutely everything I want. The reason I guess I started thinking and practising this was last night when I was at my Mum's 5oth birthday party. I was surrounded by friends of hers, some she'd known since she was wee right up until really just a few months of friendship... but they were all equal in the fact that they were all there and all showing their love to her with no discrimination or special status.

The thing I need to remind myself is that I've fought for a lot of the stuff that makes me happy now. I've fought to keep friends and I've fought to be happy. I didn't get anything I wanted by sitting back and waiting for friends to come knocking, or opportunities to present themselves. If we want things to happen we need to initialise it, we need to fight for it and we need to believe in ourselves enough to know that we can never give up. And to know that if we do, we've given up on ourselves.

I just hope that on my 50th birthday I can be surrounded by loyal friends, like my Mum. I hope we can all laugh as I read out my big poem about who I am, and clap after my daughters read out theirs. I just hope that everybody really realises how blessed they are and how loved they are. I hope that they never forget it, and they always have an opportunity to seize.