This week we couldn’t afford to pay our rent. I’m not proud or happy about this situation but it is one that we find ourselves in as I transition to a new job (payday is next week) and Matt continues to look for one. Like so many families in Australia we’ve had to prioritise feeding our family over paying the bills. I’ve grown used to ‘overdue’ and ‘final reminder’ messages as we’ve missed due dates over the years. They used to throw me into a panic and I couldn’t sleep until we were in the clear but the reality is that I wouldn’t have slept for years if I hadn’t made peace with the fact that sometimes we’re going to come in short.
We took massive risks and are now paying (or not paying as the case maybe) for the consequences of those decisions. It certainly isn’t where I expected to be at age 42 but if I can set aside the financial burden, would we have done anything differently? Would I have changed anything about our story if it meant we’d have a different outcome today? This is an incredibly hard question to answer. Of course we wanted HUCX to be a success - that’s why we poured everything into it for 10 years (and why we’re so screwed now). But would I give up all the hardship that has shaped our values moving forward? I don’t think so.
Every time we’ve faced a situation like this we’ve had to take stock of what actually matters. Even at ‘rock bottom’ (of which we’ve had many) we have to be grateful for everything that we do have. We understand that times like these are simply another chapter that we’ll work hard to get through. It sucks, but it’s survivable. I’ve done this enough times over the years that I’ve started to believe that I’m probably one of the luckiest people on earth to endure such hardship and still feel so full of gratitude. It is pretty much one of my defining characteristics as a human and my most prized. I wouldn’t give it up for anything. It’s resilience.
Being resilient, to me, is not crumpling into a ball and wishing it all away, but standing a little taller and saying ‘nope’ I can’t do it but I’m still here. Last night that presented itself by going along to the first screening for the Ballarat Film Society. Almost every part of me couldn't be bothered. I was exhausted after 3 days of school, I’ve completely wrecked my quads from doing squats on Wednesday and I didn’t have a cent to spend. A friend had asked me to be her plus one and I decided that the person I want to be would go and have a great time so I packed up my bike with a thermos of tea and a juicy peach and went to the screening of Kneecap.
I’m so glad I did.
Kneecap is a fantastic doco style film about a Irish hiphop group who overcome all sorts of shit to make their music. It was like a fun version of Trainspotting full of drugs, sex and so, so much swearing. I loved it. It completely transported me from my life and I was in theirs for an hour and a half. I also love the fact that I’m probably one of a handful of younger people who are under the age of 60 who attend the screenings. It's strangely like hanging out with everyone’s parents.
I sat there in the dark drinking my tea and slurped up my peach (I took a hanky in preparation of the clean up). It was like hitting a reset button. It’s important to do these sorts of things for ourselves, especially when things aren’t going to plan. We so often wait for things to be running smoothly so we can take our foot off the gas but so far, I’m yet to find a stretch of life that hasn’t been a challenging one. We have to constantly be grateful for what we have today because you never know what tomorrow might bring.
