Sick and tired …

Yes, yet again one of my children has a tummy bug … so I’ve been up all night and am far from bright-eyed and bushy-tailed today!  It seems like it’s one thing after another, and I have to admit I’m really sick and tired of it.  Just want to be able to concentrate on work for a little while.  I’m well aware that there are other people out there who are having it FAR tougher than we are, and I know that, in the grand scheme of things, we’re extremely lucky.  It’s just that this kind of low-grade under-the-weather-ness somehow takes the shine off life.  I guess I shouldn’t let it.  After all, I’m reading up on happiness!  Did you know that we all apparently have a happiness ’set point’ to which we return time and again, regardless of what happens to us?  So even if you win the lottery or lose a leg, within a couple of years you’ll be as happy (or unhappy!) as you always were!  Apparently, about 50% of our capacity for happiness is inherited or influenced by our first 5 years of life, a further 10% is affected by our circumstances … which leaves 40% that’s down to the attitudes and activities we choose.  According to positive psychologists, we really can make ourselves happier.  I’m working on it!

However, as part of my quest I think I might have to renounce our materialistic modern society and go and live in the Himalayas.  My latest bedtime book is by Matthieu Ricard - ‘Happiness: a guide to developing life’s most important skill’.  He’s A Buddhist monk who spends most of his time in a monastery or hermitage up in the mountains, and he makes it sound amazing.  Slightly ironic that I was reading it yesterday after a day braving the Oxford Street crowds to go Christmas shopping!

I somehow also managed to spend £150 on smart clothes yesterday, on the basis that I need to start going to a few more networking events and I don’t really think my normal slummy mummy attire would make the right impression!  Any excuse.  It’s just a shame that silk tops don’t count as valid business expenses.

Anyway, as far as business goes, I am making very - s - l - o - w - progress.  Just putting the finishing touches to a presentation that I am going to send out to potential partners, to see if I can get a suitable corporate sponsor or two.  More than anything else I need some help spreading the word about Mummo, so if anyone’s got any ideas as to how I can do it on a shoestring budget, please do let me know!

Back soon, hopefully in more of a Pollyanna mood …

Enterprising women …

Got invited to a ‘do’ the other night! Not quite sure who invited me, but I thought I might as well go anyway. Where? To the ‘Celebrating Enterprising Women’ event run by Finance South East to celebrate the end of their ‘Funding Enterprising Women’ programme. It started out as one of those fairly horrific scenarios with lots of people milling around the room supposedly ‘networking’, whilst also trying to carry a cup of coffee, a piece of cake, a handbag and a laptop bag! I didn’t know a single soul and didn’t particularly feel like meeting anyone … so spent quite a while studying the various bits of literature on offer! Interestingly enough, I then joined a workshop all about the importance of networking, only to find that most of the other women there felt exactly like me. We all had plenty of ideas as to how networking needs to change in order to become less intimidating and more useful to us, like perhaps, to start with, calling it something different! Maybe we should just have ‘coffee mornings’, rather than networking breakfasts, lunches and dinners? After all, there’s nothing worse than trying to elegantly combine talking and eating! I guess that’s the idea behind Ladies who Latte and the Athena Network’s Cappuccino Connections. Must try them out one of these days, instead of always sloping off to Starbucks by myself!

Having said that, Starbucks is fast becoming my own little sanctuary. Went there with my littlest one yesterday afternoon after a night of no sleep and a day of tantrums, hers and mine. With tear-stained faces we made our way in there, ordered a grande decaf americano for me and a giant chocolate chunk cookie for both of us (or at least, so I thought at the time!) and then collapsed into two big velvet armchairs in a dark and cosy corner. And hallelujah, the day was saved!