Tag: #winewednesday #humpday

Embrace the average

I was listening to an old episode of The High Low Podcast yesterday and they were discussing being distinctly average. If you type in “being average” into a Google search the first raft of responses are about how we shouldn’t settle for average, we should strive for being the best, the biggest, the highest paid, the most (insert noun of your choice). This implies that being average somehow isn’t quite good enough. Well I’m here to say that being average is just fine. It’s fine for you, where you are in life at this moment of time.

I’ve never really been supremely brilliant at anything particularly. I’m OK at stuff and reasonably good at some stuff and rubbish at other staff. We can’t all be brilliant at everything. I don’t particularly see this as a negative thing and its not something that bothers me.

I do the best of my ability at that time, in those circumstances. I’ve got to where I’ve got in a contrived workplace hierarchy through hard work and learning. I do believe that we should strive to be our best self, but that might by being average in terms of how the outside world relates.

I personally feel that Average is the new Great. Living your own life, the way you want to. I don’t aspire to be a CEO, I don’t aspire to have a massive house and garden and fancy stuff. I don’t aspire to be a jet setter, an influencer, marathon runner, or a fashionista.

I love the fact that I have some authority and some responsibility in all walks of my life. I have a home, car and a safe environment, which in some areas is what others aspire to. I make the occasionally good cake but I make some naff ones too. I can ring some methods including some surprise royal and maximus methods, but can’t ring some of the more basic methods or five or six bell methods. I can cook edible food but I’m not a gastronomic genius. I’m a parent of a well grounded, independent 23 year old but I didn’t get it right every time. I have some good days and some bad days.

According to Tim Denning, Its OK to be average, and average is a state of mind. What matters is the difference we make.

Embrace and celebrate being average 🍾

Hump day

Hump day, or Wednesday as its more commonly referred to, signals the middle of the working week for most. We’ve managed to survive the first two days and after we’re over the hump of Wednesday its downhill all the way to the weekend.

I do a condensed week meaning I fit full time hours into four days. The downside is doing a longer day for four days but I was pulling those hours anyway, just not getting paid for them. It does however mean I have Fridays off and I use that time to catch up on all the #bellringing paperwork I need to get done. When I started this work pattern in January 2020, I vowed that I would do one thing I had to get done and one thing that I wanted to do. Sometimes these are actually the same thing.

I’m on annual leave this week so I’ve been able to catch up with quite a number of things. This hump day though, I was rather impressed with myself.

I’ve been invited to give a talk about public relations and how to make the best of it to the St Martin’s Guild of Bellringers at the end of September. I’m not a fan of last minute.com for preparing for things like that so I had promised myself that I would do it this week whilst I was off work and had the opportunity.

Due to the current situation the talk is being streamed so I don’t get to meet the attendees in person, or get a vibe from the room as to how its going. If I was doing it to a room of people I would be making them do something creative rather than just death by PowerPoint. However I am having to do it over a video conference where there will be little chance of dynamic feedback, so death by PowerPoint it is.

I had a quick look at the length of time some of the previous talks the Guild had done and figured I’d need something about the 30-40 minutes mark, plus time for questions. I sat down at the PC at about 10am surrounded by my source materials and an open blank presentation. I was in the zone. I ploughed through the ideas in my head and committed them to the slides. I took a short break for lunch but went straight back to it. I finished it at around 5.15pm.

The sense of satisfaction I felt at the end of that was quite immense. I still have to deliver the presentation but I can relax a bit now knowing that the ground work has been done.

It being hump day, which in our house also means it’s #winewednesday, I did rather enjoy a couple of glasses of crisp chilled white.

Happy hump day or #winewednesday 🍷