Sometimes, when you’re least expecting it, life throws you a dud ball. Whilst making great plans to change my life around fate was quietly conspiring to make it that little tad more difficult than I had expected. Life, as we come to learn from an early stage, is never that straight forward. Even the best laid plans can be thrown into disarray with even one small hitch, and it is getting through these issues that most of us seem to spend our lives doing, it is not perhaps until we reach our goals, carry out our plans, that we realise that life isn’t in fact the act of meeting a target or goal, its what happened as you tried to get there. 

My new, non hermitage life, calls for making money. I am well and comfortable as it is, but when starting a new life, planning moves into foreign lands, and trying to become more sociable and hip, money is always going to be an issue at some point. It’s bad enough that I was convinced by my wonderful godmother to invest money into stocks which have since plummeted but the credit crunch seems to be affecting my clients now. – I must say here that my stocks weren’t huge, I haven’t lost massive amounts, but it was a fine example of how life doesn’t always work out the way you envisioned- . I received a call from a client today saying that she was going to have to cut back my services due to lacking funds. I completely understand her predicament, and am grateful that my services haven’t been tendered altogether, but it comes as a slight blow after losing one client last week to illness, and another to a long holiday away. In the space of a week I lost a good stamp of weekly income, and this comes the day after I got carried away online and spent £80 on new clothes! 

So financially, I’m now worse off, when I was actually creating plans that would need me to be financially better off! Isn’t that always the way! However, I am trying to be optimistic. The old me would have become disheartened, seen it as an omen and become resolute that I had no money, must stop spending and would slip back into the old ways of not going out and living a totally frugal lifestyle. But no! I must not let this happen. I have decided that the glass is half full, that it is good – I can advertise for some new clients, get a fresh injection into the business and widen my portfolio of gardens. Or to take another view - if my gardening clientel starts to dwindle it is a sign that indeed, I should go to New York, and this is a nice little way of winding the business down before I leave. 

I think I am indeed making emotional progress. I’ve managed to retain positive rather than slipping into a wallowing hippo depression and even re-rang a possible new client and am going round to do a quote later – though she has already said that she will definitely take me on, it just depends how many hours. 

The Glass is Half Full!