Tuesday 28 January 2014

Get Lucky

I went back to my old college (BCoT, since you ask) a while ago to deliver a talk on how choosing to go back into education after a shaky finish at secondary school gave me a second crack of the whip and changed my life for the better.


*Nervous face*

It was an important event for me, so much so that in the weeks leading up to it I slept fitfully amidst dreams of failure, and the adrenalin rush caused by facing eighty automotive students during the first session made my heart pound.  

I tried to break the ice with a joke centred around Pixie's 'What Goes Boom' (my heart - geddit?), but it was like holding a match to the Antarctic as twenty-year-old students do not listen to Pixies.....  The second round, with a group of thirty hair and beauty students went better thanks to the sharing of snacks (as they informed me: "sharing is caring").

Happily I didn't make any more music-based faux pas' and discovered that the video for 'Infinity' by Guru Josh from 1990 will cause impromptu 'arms in the air' dancing.  I also discovered that when you follow that video with the statement that 1990 was also the year one of your parents died, an audience will sit up and listen.

During the Q&A I was asked whether the good things that have happened in my life were down to luck or conscious decision making and I guess that it's a combination of the two as the below examples illustrate: 

  • I didn't want a teenage pregnancy so I took contraception - I was lucky to be born in a country where that contraception is available and free.  

  • I didn't want to be skint so I chose to go to work - I was lucky to find a job straight away. 

  • I found the job I'd chosen had no career prospects so I went back to college - I was lucky to be born in a country where that education is accessible and free.  

  • I wanted to pursue a corporate career and continue it after having children - I was lucky to meet and marry a man who doesn't expect his wife to stay at home.

And so it goes on.  A little luck but a lot of hard work, conscious decision making and a lot of seeking out opportunity.  

I had likened my attitude to being like a cat going after a laser beam before realising that the cat never catches the beam, so perhaps it's more accurate to say I'm like a dog in a field full of interesting smells.  I am constantly darting around, seeking out new opportunities to improve, collaborate, try new things and progress.  And like the dog chasing the scent, sometimes I run into things and bang my head, sometimes I find the trail doesn't go where I thought it would, and sometimes I become so focused on the possible opportunity that I miss paying attention to the bigger picture and have to be shouted at until I return like "FENTON!", but every now and then the trail leads to something truly brilliant which causes me to bound around in joyous delight.  

With a constant pull between getting on with the job in hand and chasing those opportunities it's a difficult balance to maintain.  Life is good, so perhaps I should just enjoy things as they are and be grateful for what I have, I'm certain my family sometimes wishes I would.  But the passing of friends and relatives reminds me that life can be incredibly, shockingly short, and so I plan to cram as much experience and opportunity into whatever time I have.  For as long as I'm here, I'm going to chase those trails, I'm going to work hard on getting lucky.

Soundtrack: Get Lucky - Daft Punk








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