The Fun Factor

“I hate life right this minute,” was the exasperated and dramatic declaration from my almost 9-year-old last night. By all accounts (at least from a third grader’s perspective), her day had been tough. Lots of homework, her two hour dance class ran late, she didn’t get the part she wanted in her theater company’s Christmas show, and she lost TV and computer privileges for failing to clean her room. My advice was to get some rest and see if things seemed a little brighter with the dawning of a new day.

Sometimes I have days like that, too. It’s easy to get bogged down with the boring stuff – taking care of a shipping error on a package your customer never received, dealing with a crashed computer, or your entire day being thrown off schedule because your mechanic failed to tighten a hose under your hood that needs to be really tight in order for your car to continue to run (yep, happened to me just last week.)

I have found on those days (or really any days), that if I can focus on the reason I am doing “what I do,” I can breeze through those annoying tasks, easily deal with a seemingly inept vendor, or be kind to a scattered client.

So when I am “hating life right this minute,” I remind myself to see the happy look on a client’s face the morning the write-up in the paper appears, or the girls really enjoying their dance classes, or maybe even a new pair of super-cute shoes sitting on the shelf in my closet. I think enhancing our own lives and the lives of those around us is the real reason we work – whether work for you is as a high-powered attorney, a small-town boutique owner or a mother managing a household of kids and all that entails.

As you can see from the photo of my daughter (who is growing her hair for Locks of Love), the morning dawned quite bright today. Here’s to focusing on happy times and making sure fun is always a factor – because when it boils right down to it, shouldn’t that be the real reason we all “do what we do” every day?

"One day your life will flash before your eyes. Make sure it's worth watching,"--unknown