Some Days Are Better Than Others

Some days are better than others. We all know that.

Yesterday was a bad one for me, as somene who identifies as an underachiever. You see, there is a fine line between simply knowing you are an underachiever, and the acute, all-consuming, painful self-awareness that occasionally grips you, and leaves you feeling imprisonsed by your own lack of success.

It started when a workmate asked me how many days are in 8 weeks. I told her 56. Then she asked me how I worked it out. As she clearly was not joking, and because I am not, by nature, the kind of person who rejoices in making people feel stupid, I resisted the urge to point out that she was stupid. A thing like that'll leave me reeling. Not the fact that the poor girl doesn't have the aptitude to calculate the simplest mathematical problem, nor that her father wasted his money on a private education. It comes down to the fact that we work in the same office. Granted, we do different jobs, and I earn more money, but I just feel so impotent there, sitting next to people who see shopping as a spiritual experience (that's a whole other conversation) and don't know how many days in a week. On days like these, I can't bear to be reminded that I am confined by my own choices, and clueless as to how I can move upwards and out of my self-imposed rut. Which decisions were the wrong ones? And how can I make them right? (Fifth point of underachieving - Knowing you can do so much better, but feeling powerless to improve your position.)

So it was a long day, a bad day, and then I came home.

I spent a lot of time on my balcony that night. That's not unusual. It's where I think. Or don't think. Whatever seems the order of the day. This night I didn't want to think.

The Thames was summer's-night-silver. Mostly silver, but with amber puddles where the lights on the far side of the river spill over. London's skyline wrapped the horizon, like a cardboard prop, against the blue-grey sky, ringed (in parts) by unforgettable pink-stained clouds. Even if I had the words, I couldn't describe it to you. You really have to see it.

My view is superb. When I sit on my balcony at night, looking out, it helps me forget that some people don't know how many days in a week, that Richard Yates had something I'll never have, that Haruki Murakami can run further than I ever will, that I am an underachiever. With this view, I just feel lucky. (Sixth point of underachieving - If you're going to be a daydreaming underachiever, make sure you are a daydreamer, first and foremost, and things don't seem quite so bad.)