Last week I was sat on the train home, after not a hard day at work, just not a particularly good one. I was feeling a bit fed up at the prospect of spending yet another evening on my own, and generally felt like I needed some kind of change. The train was busy, and I wasn't in the mood for people but had forgotten to bring my ear phones with me, and my mobile data had run out days ago.
I sat at a table seat, hoping to keep just a little bit of breathing space, but had no such look, as the seats around me filled up with other commuters. 'I should have aimed for the train before this' I thought to myself, and sat there really not feeling like myself at all.
I just felt a bit like I'd had enough, or rather more like I didn't have enough. I felt like I didn't have enough excitement, or motivation, or even just company.
I was tired, I was grumpy and I was hormonal. And then the people around me started talking.
Evidentally the were co-workers at some sort of bathroom fittings warehouse. They complained about office politics, about not knowing what they wanted to do with their lives, about sales techniques, and managers that made decisions that didn't make sense. They spoke about stock tracking, and spreadsheets, and the never ending customer issues with a particular line of bathtubs. And I sat there, and I unashamedly eavesdropped.
Not because what they were saying was interesting, but because it wasn't.
I'm sorry to say this, and maybe they don't feel this way every day, but to me their jobs sounded excruciatingly boring.
Of course to others, that might sound like the dream, but to me it was everything in a job that I knew I didn't want. It echoed the talk around the kitchen table as I was growing up and my parents were growing tired of the same old day in day out. To me it sounded like they were lost. Like they'd done everything they were supposed to do, and the question they were really asking themselves wasn't really 'Why did Collin get fired' but 'Is this really it?'
And I sat there and I thought about how lucky I was. That while my job doesn't neccessairily challenge or excite me every day (because it's a job and they have a funny way of being a bit like that) even on my worst days, I couldn't fill a train journey home with those type of complaints.
I realised that I did have enough, and that it is natural to not feel fulfilled every single day. That life would be exhausting if every day flew by at 190 miles per hour. And that while it is only natural to want things to eventually progress, that to be in a position where you want to move forward and not want to start again from the beginning is an achievement.
Everybody's ideal day, life and work look different. And just because the conversations those co-workers were having sounded painful to me maybe they weren't as dissatisfied as I was interpreting them to be. The point isn't whether or not I was happier than they were, it's that I was happy enough in my life, and if they'd heard about my day watching a children's show, and then having to vacuum dough off a library floor, they might have realised that they to were happy enough.
It's important to strive for more, but it's also really important to take a moment and appreciate everything that you all ready are and have.
Some days having just enough is all that you need x
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