Something To Strive For

This morning while Laurel was working on a Bob the Builder puzzle, she remarked, “Mommy, you know what’s funny? Bob the Builder always looks happy even though he’s always so busy!”

This simple observation stopped me in my (frenzied house tidying) tracks. From my own experience, and from a majority of what I read about friends, family, and colleagues via my Twitter and Facebook feeds, the human condition is to be busy, and - it seems - to suffer through an awful lot of that busyness. Indeed, when I’m oscillating at a high stress level, I even tend to forget about how truly miserable my postdoctoral fellowship was and that the whole point of jumping academic ship was to construct something new and joyful for myself. I may not be making gobs of money (although I certainly wasn’t doing that in academia either), but I’m living the dream via a flexible, creative lifestyle that allows me lots of time with my daughter through the week. Unfortunately, I tend to lose sight of this fact when I’m feeling overwhelmed by my to-do list.

I’ve never even seen a Bob the Builder cartoon, but thanks to Laurel’s observation, I’m going to try to ride that cheery dude’s wave. Why not strive to be happy while busy and look for the positives even in the less exciting projects? The universe needs all the positive energy it can get right now.