glue sticks, cake and half a million dollars

Here i am again.

on perspective this time.

there is this card I sent to my dad recently. the front of the card shows two dinosaurs peeking through some bushes, noticing Noah's Ark floating away in deep flood waters, packed to the gills with animals. on the front, one dinosaur is saying to the other "oh crap. was that today?" the inside says, "a bad day is all about perspective."

isn't it though?

isn't every day about perspective? i was making my way through another of my own "bad days" yesterday--a tough one where we were realizing we'd lost two very big dollar opportunities when one client we were courting acquired a marketing agency--which pretty much negated the need to pay US any more. the other opportunity was a project for a huge customer we'd done a ton of work preparing a proposal for. On the day we were to propose, though, HE WAS FIRED.

seriously. so I was thinking, damn! I just can't stand the stress of this day! i can't live like this. I am having a panic attack. that was when my daughter called me (multiple times, as she doesn't grasp the concept of leaving a voicemail and waiting politely for a returned call). when I answered all thin-voiced and tightly gripping my phone she said "mom, i cannot live like this anymore. kate knocked my container of glue sticks out of my hand and now i have lost one. I NO LONGER HAVE EIGHT GLUE STICKS! I CAN ONLY FIND SEVEN... I just can't deal with this kind of stress anymore!"

later that evening, my boyfriend spoke with his mom on the phone, who said something like "this has been a rough day. would you believe that we took volunteer photos today and a few of the volunteers hadn't even done anything more than bake a cake?" I'm not sure she actually said she couldn't live like this anymore, but you get the idea.

It's all about perspective. And maybe acknowledging that my $500k potential loss at work is potentially as important (or trivial) as a glue stick. And a cake. We all have our tragedies, and in our own little movie versions of the world, they are equally devastating.

I will try and remember things like this.

I will also try and remember to put important events in my calendar, like "on tuesday, it's gonna rain. get on the boat."