Epiphanies

I love the word, but that’s beside the point.

An old ex boyfriend found me today on Twitter. No dramas, we parted company reasonably amicably and time passes and turns reasonably into water passing under bridges. We swapped details, little has changed, he’s doing very well for himself as a PM at Channel 4 and I’m earning nothing at all in some ex cotton mill town in deepest darkest East Lancashire.

I left it there. I didn’t have to. I merely explained peoples job roles didn’t define them and dropped it. And there was the epiphany. I’ve got nothing to prove and it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter whether I am more or less successful compared to my old peers at university. It doesn’t matter that I live in a run down falling apart terrace. It doesn’t matter that the roof leaks sometimes. It doesn’t matter that the garden is tarmac and over looked by what feels like hundreds.

I’m proud of my job. I am more than my job. My extra-curricular activities these days define me perhaps more, and would perhaps look more successful to outsiders than the ones I undertake during my working day.

I just left it. It doesn’t matter. It’s not a competition. Local government doesn’t get done because it’s noble, because it’s cool, or because it’s what success looks like in this modern world.

Local gov gets done because some of us care. And are proud to care. And whilst my work/life balance is receiving some TLC at the moment, I will continue to care. Where I express that care might change, but the caring never will. It just is.

But for a 30 something, it’s about the most uncool damn job in the whole wide world.

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