It will come as no surprise to anyone who knows me or follows me on twitter that things haven’t been especially fantastic in my world for a little while now. I wrote about a part of it a little over two years ago and have been meaning to write more since, but suffice to say things have generally been trending downward until my mental health took a fairly profound (but not entirely unexpected) nose-dive last summer from which I am still recovering.
I will write about it sometime, for no other reason than to try and better understand it myself, but not yet.
Because despite everything, this week has been awesome.
I started with a new client on Monday: the work is far from world-changing, the clients’ location means I am spending in excess of three hours a day commuting to and from the office, and I don’t feel like I’ve had a good nights’ sleep all week. But strangely none of that seems important.
Because every day this week I’ve been leaving the office with a smile on my face. The tiredness and frustration that I’ve come to expect has been replaced by satisfaction and accomplishment.
Earlier today I was stopped in the middle of wrangling Date objects in Javascript by a sudden realisation of just how happy I was: I wanted to sing or shout, but instead—in deference to my colleagues—chose to spend a few moments in quiet mindfulness.
This post is an extension of that. This feeling won’t last, the contract will end, and the problems I’ve been dealing with will still be there. This too, soon, shall pass.
But too often when things are going badly, we reach for social media to rant and complain, and while the moment passes the tweets and posts do not. Perhaps we should acknowledge happiness more, and that’s what this post is about.
How has your week been? Maybe it’s worth remembering.