be less envious

I need to STOP longing for what everyone else has and learn to be happy with what I have.

This is such a challenge for me. All around me my friends have wonderful partners, are getting engaged, are good at their jobs, and don’t have the problem I have with needing to drink to be confident. I am envious of the fact that my boyfriend can break up with me and not struggle with the heartache. I am envious that he has goals and interests that can sustain him through this transition for both us; I have none of that. Hmmm…another challenge…find an interest that I really enjoy.

sometimes i envy the way my friends look, or how some get more attention from the opposite sex, or where they live (in the city versus the suburbs), and i really want to not let it bother me anymore, because it makes me resentful of these people that i really do like.

because their son Ben, 13, has a real drum kit he can bash Hell out of, whereas our son Stan, 13, cannot because we are in a semi-detached house and the walls are thin.

Unless Andy, our neighbour, experiences severe hearing loss ( and I really don’t want that to happen, Andy), Stan will never be able to have a proper drum kit. He’s got an electronic one that you plug into your computer and I think he’s pretty much mastered it. I can see that it’s a very poor substitute for the real thing.

but a little bit of car envy as everyone else seems to have a lovely car.

What a difference a few days off makes!!

because I live in a place where everyone is rich except me, and because I am doing my course I am earning less money than ever, and my husband works his do-dahs off but he doesn’t make much money either. Instead, he is incredibly focused on saving money. So that, when his father gave him some money he spent it on a solar panel.

The thing about the solar panel is, it really doesn’t work in winter, unless you keen your thermostat right down. (I don’t understand this bit). Therefore we never have much hot water, and it’s never really hot. Also, of course, it doesn’t work at night, so my husband will not heat the water in the morning. He will heat it once a day, at 5pm, after the sun has had a chance to get to the solar panel.

I now feel envious of everyone who has a nice hot shower in the morning.

I really only manage to not feel terribly envious of everyone once a week, in church, after really concentrating on my blessings, and remembering the truly desperate people there are in the world. Then I realise how lucky I am.

today I went to my brother’s house and he was busy making home improvements. He has improved his house enormously. He has put lots of time and money into it.

Back home: we just mark books and plan lessons. There never seems to be time for anything else!

of other people’s strength, wealth, self-confidence, lives that look less like hard work than mine. My life is such hard work that I never seem to move on.
I need to be more positive, more grateful, because there are lots of good things that I have and love having. And I’m glad I can do my job, even if it seems like the hardest job in the world sometimes.