Feeling Unappreciated?

A friend forwarded me an email with the subject heading ‘Feeling Unappreciated Lately?’ this week. Before opening it I thought it might be one of those ‘lovey-dovey’ emails with huge lists of reasons why the sender is your friend and they are really sorry that they don’t tell you this often enough. I couldn’t be more wrong…

In it was a newspaper cutting describing how a man had been left dead at his desk for a whole 5 days and no had realised that he had passed away. This happened despite the fact that he worked in an open plan office.

His boss said no one had noticed his death because he was a conscientious worker so ‘no one found it unusual that he was in the same position all that time and didn’t say anything’.

Not saying anything is one thing but the poor guy hadn’t been breathing for a week. In fact it wasn’t even his fellow colleagues who realised he was no longer of this world – but a cleaner who asked him why he was working on a Saturday and got no response.

I work in an open plan office and always make a point of saying hello and goodbye to people, even if I am sinking fast under a pile of work so I find this report completely baffling.

However, I can’t work out what is more depressing – actually dying at your desk surrounded by mountains of work or the lack of manners that was demonstrated in this particular office?

We spend the majority of day working so it would make sense to be courteous enough to at least pass the time of day with each other and notice when people’s hearts have stopped beating. I may not be the fastest thing on two legs but I’d like to think people would realise that I hadn’t moved an inch for the past 120 hours.

But it got me thinking about how appreciated we are: not just in our work relationships but also in our personal relationships.

I can’t enter into a discussion about appreciation without referring to depreciation (the curse of being a qualified accountant).

An interesting way to look at relationships is to compare them with cars. Cars depreciate in value when they are not looked after properly and get damaged. If things are really bad they may have to be written off and scrapped because they are not worth keeping and have no value left in them.

 A car which is looked after, however, can actually appreciate in value. Now, while this is a rare occurrence and only happens when a car becomes vintage or classic. This can only happen when a painstaking amount of time is put into to realise a investment.

So cars are a lot like relationships: sometimes we have to take care and have patience to realise the true worth of a relationship and other times we have to know when to cut our losses and invest in another one.

As Mary Kay Ash, founder of May Kay Cosmetics said ‘Everyone wants to be appreciated, so if you appreciate someone, don't keep it a secret.’ I think it’s time we all shared some secrets and show our appreciation when we can.

 On the plus side though what I have always suspected is true – don’t worry about working too hard, no one notices what you do at work anyway!

Plenty more fish in the sea?

People are always telling me that ‘there’s plenty more fish in the sea’. But is there really? I am literally at a loss about where to do my ‘fishing’, so to speak.

Everyone seems to be quick to offer suggestions to young, single people of where to go and what to do to find a partner. One person told me recently the best way to meet someone was grocery shopping on a Friday night (apparently this is the time when singletons do their shopping because, obviously, they don't have anything better to do on a Friday night). Not one to dismiss something completely off hand without giving it a go and seeing if it works, I popped down to my local supermarket to see if there were masses of single men swarming the aisles, as I had been lead to believe by my friend.

All I can say is I'm glad I didn't spend more time getting ready before I went as it would have been a huge waste of effort. I did find some male attention but, unfortunately, it was from a grey-haired gentleman who asked me if I could reach him a tin from the top shelf. He then winked at me suggestively and I spent the rest of the shopping trip trying to hide in the aisles from him.

This isn't the only thing I have tried, like I say 'don't knock it until you've tried it'. But here are my conclusions:

Internet dating - guaranted that you will only find one of these three things: men who are only looking for one thing, weirdos and weirdos who are only looking for one thing.

Blind dates - they say that 'Love is Blind' but I wouldn't buy a car without giving it a good look and I take the same attitude towards potential dates.

Set ups by friends - always ended in disaster and left me feeling that my friends mustn't really know me that well or like me that much because I never have anything remotely in common with the date.

So I was wondering if the metaphor 'there's plenty more fish in the sea' needs to be adapted to the modern day. Just as the stock levels of fish around the world are dwindling due to over fishing, are the stock levels of suitable men also dwindling to the point where perfectly lovely women cannot find a decent man through want of trying? If the Government are trying to protect fish stocks, why aren't they doing anything to protect me and other women like me? After all I do pay my taxes... and plenty of them!

Which is why I'm putting down my rod for a while to let the stocks top back up. In a few months, I will be getting my net out.

New Year, New Leaf

Two weeks into the New Year and how many of us have already broken our New Year's Resolution? Every year we try to convince ourselves that this is definitely the year, OUR year even. It's always a case of 'This year I will get fit/ lose weight / stop smoking / drink less* (Delete as appropriate).

Because of this I was thinking about the phrase 'to turn over a new leaf'. I had a quick look on the internet to see if I could find the origin of the phrase but nothing comes up. The phrase refers to turning a page of a book and making a fresh start on a new chapter. But the age that we are living in today I wonder how long phrases like this will remain relevant and comprehensible.

In particular what worries me is the use of technology and how it is slowly taking over our lives. How long will it be before kindles replace books completely? Maybe the next generations will think that 'to turn over a new leaf' has something to do with trees or gardening as they will have never experienced turning over a leaf of a page a physical book. What a strange world that will be.

I actually don't understand the point of a kindle. It's solving a problem that doesn't exist. What is wrong with manually turning the pages of a book as you get to the end of each page. It seems a little bit like the height of laziness. I have honestly never got half way through a book and decided to stop because turning the pages has become too much of a chore. The saying 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' has never been more applicable. Plus the advantage that a physical book has over a kindle is when you put the bookmark in and you realise that you are over half way, you feel really intelligent.

People have commented that having a kindle is so convenient. Reading isn't meant to be convenient: it's meant to be educational, pleasureable and a means of escape from the mundane routine of ordinary like.

I mustn't be on my own in thinking this, as there is actually a word to describe people who have a dislike of kindles. It's guttenbourgios. And for the record I do dislike kindles. The only thing that kindle is good for is lighting fires!

So what is my New Leaf for this New Year? I actually have several which I am more than sure I will write about on this blog (in fact to write more and post on this blog is one of them). At the moment, the list of things that I want to achieve this year seems to be more than challenging and I'm not sure how I will get through it (a bit like how I felt 2 months into my A Levels) but I have a feeling it is going to be a Great Year!