Life is absolutely horrible: sort of. You struggle, and struggle, and struggle…then have a burger and a beer(s) which helps you momentarily forget about it for a bit…and then – more of the same. Toiling ruthlessly for little reward, receiving a catalogue of “NO, NO, NO”s until you are a skeletal husk devoid of ambition…or perhaps even worse wistfully dreaming away each day as you sit shackled to a desk in a job you despise, and with a boss you would happily run over accidentally/on purpose…
(Don’t worry I’ll keep it a secret, and help you bury the…shhhh, never mind…keep it moving. Email me when the job is done…)
As much as the internet would like you suggest otherwise with the endless positive blogs and braggadocious Instagram posts displaying fantastical lives devoid of any rainstorms whatsoever…life is largely about delayed happiness, rather than an endless shower of chicken and mushroom pies. Case in point my mother has promised me one of these homemade wonders when I pop back to visit for Christmas…I am literally counting down the days – I wish I could have it on the daily, but nooo!
I’ll get to the point shall I? Well, yes…I have been hiking a bit recently, and by a bit I mean I hiked two different mountains the past two Sundays and won’t be doing it again for the rest of this year – and possibly/definitely for the rest of my life. But whilst doing this I had a thought…you see on the way up I was pathetically scrabbling slowly and not so surely, sweating buckets, breathing more heavily than Darth Vader after running two marathons…and basically just wishing I would conveniently slip of the cliff to my death just to give my burning thighs a break…
And yet, when I was coming down…there was a new lease of life…and I enjoyed every bouncing step as I hopped from rock to rock quickly descending down the same paths that I had once struggled so horrendously with just moments before. I was Aragon, I was Legolas…in actual fact I probably looked like Gimli – but fuck it I was doing it, and enjoying every second of it!
You see that’s how life is…and I’m okay with it. You have to take the rough with the smooth, and the good with the bad. Sometimes the hard work takes a long time, and the rewards come in a short and limited burst…but rather than fret about this we should just enjoy it! I’m working a lot now – my schedule is much more packed than I would like – but I know that I have a few months of travelling coming up next year...and then it will be back to the grind, wherever and whatever that may be.Â
But I will have those memories, I’ll have seen those places, laughed with friends and cried with family. So as horrendous as things can be – I will always try to treasure the fleeting joy on the way down…
Hope you do too.Â
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John Lee Taggart 
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