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As busy as we get, don’t forget to take time to enjoy your friends.

With the holidays approaching, I find myself finally taking time to check in with friends and acquaintances that I have neglected over the past few months.  I can come up with many excuses for the neglect – too busy with work, too many personal matters, and yes, too lazy.  Sure I think about these people often, and may send a cute e-mail or check up with them on Facebook or Twitter or other social media outlets, but never really take the time to stop and see how they are doing through actual conversation, even if electronic.

For some, so much time has gone by that there is an awkwardness to the thought of popping into their holiday as if we never had time apart, but I know I am not alone in thinking this is the time to do it.  I know this because I get those same holiday greetings.

Now, I am not knocking the use of social media or the web in any sense to keep track and keep up of the people in my life when time and situations make it difficult to meet up and catch up on all around us.  Sometimes just peeking into the world of our friends is all we can do.  I have reconnected with many of my childhood friends and even long-lost family members via social media, but that once a week (or couple of months) check of their status does not replace the contact one should make personally with those they care about.

After a particularly strange and challenging year,I have finally gotten off my rump to begin the holiday greetings and have found even more so how important staying in touch is when we think we have no time to do so.

After about four months of just checking statuses and profile pictures, I went to say hello and happy holidays to someone who I had done business with in the past and had maintained, or I thought maintained, a friendly relationship with over the past 5 years.  I was saddened to see that this very personable, caring and friendly person had passed away four months ago.  I was shocked.  I went back through my last e-mails to her and found that yes, it had been that long since I “spoke” with her, congratulating her on the new baby and impending wedding.  Now she was gone, and I didn’t even know it until four months had gone by.

The holidays usually bring out the best in people and the desire to check in on our friendships and acquaintances and even business professionals we deal with.  This year I am reminded that if we don’t make everyday a holiday, we may just miss out on some really important things that are going on with the very important people in our lives.

So I will enjoy the holidays in the traditions that I have come to follow, but I will work to make every day a holiday and make a better effort to stay in touch with those who are important to me.  That will be the gift I give myself this year.

Lastly, it has been tradition for me to have bells on Christmas for those who I have known that have become angels in my life, and according to Clarence, ringing the bells will give an angel their wings.  So this year, unfortunately, I have a few angels I have to be sure to give their wings.

You will be missed:  Saydie, Florence, and Barbara.  Friend, coworker, confidant.  The bells are ringing for each of you.

A few of my favorite little things. Keep your diamonds and gems. I don’t want them.

I woke up this morning to my son making breakfast, making coffee, and baking brownies.  I thought I was in the wrong house.  Now don’t get me wrong, my sons, both of them are incredible, and they have their moments where they really make me glow, but to wake up earlier than me and start breakfast for me and make coffee for me, on top of cleaning dishes – that was amazing.   I figure my boys are not typically mushy anymore now that they are grown, so it was his way of saying he is thankful for me.

 

If there is any other reason, I do not want to know it.  I am happy thinking the way my brain processed it.

 

I grew up in a difficult household, with a difficult family, so the grand gestures of affection and all that go with it have become to mean nothing to me over the years.  They were always done for a reason, a cost – usually emotional prices that I paid to be able to get a glimmer of hope for something little for myself too.

 

Over time I came to realize the little things mean so much more.  They are usually not thought out, spontaneous, and are like drunken conversations – what is really meant and true to the heart.  Do you know what I mean?

 

The breakfast in bed just because, the pouring of a cup of coffee because I am too busy, the call just to say “Hi” and did I make it home safe, the walking of the dog so I can sleep in.  Those kinds of things. The real love, attention and affection and respect that just happens in your day to day life for no reason except that you are.

 

With every friendship and relationship – personal and professional, the little things are more and more important and what those little things are differ from person to person, moment to moment.   Just a reminder that we are significant to each other and we are thought of.  The little things.   We love each other.   We like each other.  We enjoy each other.  We respect each other.

 

My girlfriends certainly can’t bring me coffee in bed, but they do call to say hi, and send a joke through e-mail at just the right moment.  They know when to chat me up because I am feeling especially blue.  And I do the same.

 

My clients can’t have casual conversations over coffee with me, but they can respect my team’s hard work to continue to send us work and make referrals, and we can offer them our best always.

 

My team can’t work for free, but they can give me and our clients the best they have, and I can thank them for their best and appreciate them all.

 

My lover can’t always be the one I can bitch to, but he can always take a moment to say ‘hey I missed you’ or ‘I was thinking of you yesterday’.  He may want to move mountains for me, but knows that sometimes the best thing would be to teach me to move them myself when things need to be done.  He can make me laugh, and I can show him I care by being there for him as well, with a smile in my eyes if not on my face.

 

My parents couldn’t give me the world as most parents want to, but they did teach me that I can have it if I work hard enough for it.  Even if that lesson comes from reverse psychology and seeing what I didn’t want to be.  My world is mine, and I can show them I appreciate it by living my life and being a strong independent woman, a good mother, a hard worker, and a good friend.  I can understand and appreciate how the tribulations of my childhood, made me who I am today.

 

My siblings can’t be there everyday, close and loving, nor can I, but when the tough times come, we band together – no matter what.  We can take a moment every once in a while to catch up and show that in spite of it all, we are family.

 

They say diamonds and gems are a girl’s best friend.  Not this girl’s.  A few of my favorite things do not cost a thing –  attention, affection, respect, and appreciation at the most spontaneous time imaginable. Those things make my world a much nicer place to be – even if it is just the way my naive brain processes it at that very moment.

 

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.  I am thankful for my past, my present, and the future – full of the little things that will make my life that much more interesting.

 

 

 

 

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