Today I got up on the wrong side of the bed. I was in a bad mood all day. Perhaps it’s because I was tired, having gotten up at 5:45am to exercise before starting work at 7:45am (sometimes sleep should be a priority. A lot of the time I can be stubborn and slightly irrational – 5 hours is enough sleep right?) The day started great with an excellent workout, but as the exhaustion set in, causing my eyes to strain and my world to feel mushy, my temper also started to explode in sparks.

“If one more person doesn’t know their membership number, I’m going to walk right out of this gym” – I thought to myself. I journaled, trying to let go of the mood, but every time my journalling was interrupted by a phone call or a needy colleague I got even more agitated. “What am I still doing working as a receptionist at a gym?” I felt exasperated, and the fear of being stuck behind this desk forever began to overwhelm me, and I felt even worse.

Thank God on weekends I get an hour lunch break (because my shift is over 8 hours long). I escaped to a nearby Starbucks, wrapped my hands around a hot cup of coffee (with a sprinkle of cinnamon) and disappeared into my book. For the last 3 days I have not been able to put down “The Sense of an Ending” by Julian Barnes. I want to be a writer. No. I want to be an award-winning writer. With this in mind, I have started making my way through the Pulitzer Prize winning plays, books of poetry, and novels, as well as the winners of the Man Booker Prize. I figure that the only way to become the best, is to learn from the best. I’m also reading these works with an eye for passages that stick out to me. I finished this book today, and there is one passage that caught my eye. I have not been able to get it out of my head (don’t worry, this gives nothing away if you’re interested in checking out the novel yourself):

“But time… how time first grounds us and then confounds us. We thought we were being mature when we were only being safe. We imagined we were being responsible but were only being cowardly. What we called realism turned out to be a way of avoiding things rather than facing them. Time… give us enough time and our best-supported decisions will seem wobbly, our certainties whimsical”

As I started writing this blog post, I wasn’t entirely certain where I was going with it. To be honest, I’m still not sure. All I know is that the concept of ‘time’ confounds me just as much as it did the protagonist (and I can only assume, the author) of this novel. Time is what you make of it. It’s an illusion that is given strength by our fear and our insecurities. As Eckhart Tolle would say, time does not exist. All that we have is now.

Yes, I do still have to go to work tomorrow. I cannot deny this fact. Yes I’m frustrated that I still work there. Yes I want my life to move faster. I’m impatient. I want success now. But stop. Today at the gym I chatted with one of our regular members who has a hole in his neck from smoking too much. Mostly confined to a wheel chair, he commits to coming to the gym 3 times a week with the belief that he can improve his health and better his quality of life, and guess what? He’s doing it. Today I had an opportunity to speak to this member, and truthfully told him that he looked healthier. I made him smile and, despite my bad day, I walked back to the reception desk with a smile.

Truth: I’m not where I want to be right now, but scaring myself with the prospect that my life is never going to be any more than what it is right now serves no purpose. It’s a fear, and it is exactly those thought patterns that are keeping me stuck.

Do you know what I do have the power to do? I do have the power to be happy. I do have the power to take bigger risks. I also have the power to believe in myself.

There’s a lot of things that I can’t control. I can’t control time. I can’t control others. I can’t control… I was trying to come up with something clever for this last one, but gave up.

That being said, there is one thing that I can control. That one thing is my thoughts. I can control my thoughts, and thereby I can control my happiness.

I woke up on the wrong side of the bed today. Tomorrow I’m going to wake up with a smile.