Clack. Clack.

I woke up this morning like most weekday mornings thinking, CRAP!! Some days it's harder to stay focus on positivity than others. My job is a worthwhile, honourable job supporting people to help themselves but it's frustrating because there is are always obstacles in the form of mountainous paperwork, inept social workers, angry, ill informed clients, and ridiculous deadlines set by directors and managers far above reality that prove harder and harder to be met by the people who are actually on the front line. The one thing that this job has taught me is that I don't suffer fools gladly. Okay, admittedly I already knew that, It has led me to believe I'm a results oriented person. I like completeness in whatever I do, a beginning, a middle and an end. Unfortunately in this post things seem to be never ending. We provide ongoing support. So if a social worker has a client for two months we'll have them for minimum six months with equal volume of work. An image that aptly describes how I see is being in the middle on the ocean in a sinking dingy desperately trying to keep afloat by siphoning the water out with a leaky bucket. So where did it all go wrong? How did I get here so far from the dreams of childhood?

When I was a child, I had many dreams of becoming so much more than I am today. I remember as a young boy rushing home from school to turn on the television and watch Style with Elsa Klensch. It was my favourite program (in retrospect it should have been a warning sign). I would sit there, my young eyes glued to the television set and dream the dream that one day I would be designing beautiful clothes and creating magnificent interior designs. I even kept a book of my own fashion design drawings. And when I wasn't doing that I was thinking of new ways of creating new more colourful furnishing for the living room using discarded pieces of cloth that my mother had placed in an old cardboard box. But in a small island with even smaller minds, such grandiose dreams where never encouraged. It was dangerous to have dreams in a place where artistic dreams are destined to be still born. It was my first real introduction to disappointment. To know that my world of possibilities were limited. What use is colour and glitter in a world of black and white. Clack.

As I grew older my favourite subject at school was comprehension and composition. I loved writing stories. I love setting my imagination free. Flying dragons battling brave knights in armour, unicorns with rainbow coloured hair and bug eyed monsters as tall as buildings. But with the Common Entrance (CE) or as it was sometimes called the 11plus exams looming so close our teachers started to prepare us for this by drilling facts and figures into our mind. "Stop daydreaming and pay attention," they would shout as a blackboard duster when sailing pass the daydreamer's head. Time to put away childish things they told us in so many ways. The CE exams were an exam which every school child need to complete at 11+ years of age. Failure in these exams meant that your education was ended at 11 years of age. There was no time for play, writing stories of spacemen was never going to get get me A's or B's. Clack. Clack.

So here I am, so many years later in a land of opportunity. Certificates, diplomas and degrees lay yellowing and cracked at the bottom of a drawer as I doddle another comic book character. My artist self, hidden so long and denied the light struggles to breathe. It finds expression in a furtive painting, a doddle on a compliment slip, piles of half written stories on scraps of paper and ring notepads. Too afraid. Clack. No faith. Clack. Too old. Clack. No 'real' talent. Clack. The thoughts scurry across my mind like crabs and conspire to keep my true self hidden. The clack clack sound of their mental claws are loud in my head. Be reasonable. Clack. This is all you're ever going to be. Clack.

I know that as children we want to be everything. A fire fighting, space police, astronaut who's a ballet dancer cum interior designer on the weekends (or maybe that was just me).The point is, as we grow older we come to the inevitable realisation that we can't be everything. This realisation at first appears like the death of our dreams and we mourn those dreams. But if we are guided by positive role models and mentors wherever you find them we come to realise that from the death of one dream another can arise. Recognising our own strengths and weakness can be a God sent. Knowing in what area of your life you are weak can spur you on to improving it. If you want to be a scientist and you are weak in maths then you will work harder to get those maths grades up. If you want to be an artist but don't know the primary colours (red, yellow, blue) then you would learn the brush stroke techniques and colour chart. However there are times when we realise that n matter how much you study or hard you work it's not enough. That what we thought we wanted to do with our lives isn't what we want to do but what our parents want us to do. After all they only want the best for you. The last thing they want is for you to be a starving artist.

However a new path may open up, when we discover that what from what we see as a weakness, an unforeseen strength can emerge. OK, so the only good painting you can do is on your bedroom wall but you discover that you can paint pictures with words in a song or novel like no one else can. It is these strengths which we can harness and create a life for ourselves. For a lucky few people, they know what are their strengths and weakness, and are able to use them to their advantage. For the rest of us it's a daily struggle to find out what it's all about, find what you are good at and most importantly find what you enjoy doing. You can do most things but there will be something that you can do exceptionally well better than anyone.

For me I'm still on that journey. Hopefully this blog will help shine a light on the correct path I am to follow. So now every morning when I wake up and still think CRAP!! but I never leave it as that negative thought. Each day I am more determined to find my path to true happiness.