Wednesday 25 May 2016

Thank you for being ...

I was going to start this by saying, “I have two friends …” but realised that made me sound like a lonesome loser.

Anyway. I have two friends - dammit.

Okay. Now that’s out of the way, let me get to the point of this post, that I’ve had simmering in my brain-parts for a while. I started thinking about it because these two friends are very, very different people.

I call them the “yes, but” friend and the “oh my god yes, you should do it!” friend.

The “yes, but” friend - who I call to mind when I need to temper my actions and impulses, is someone I’ve known since I was five years old. We look nothing alike, but have been mistaken for sisters, as we know each other so well. This is the friend that I will call when I burn my arm on hot oil and need to go to A&E (er, for example). She’s my Saturday night stitch-and-watch friend, and her pragmatism helps keep me grounded.

The “oh my god yes you should do it!” friend is someone I met at work. It’s been rocky, sometimes and we lost touch for a long time - until I took redundancy last year and she came to the leaving do (the leaving do was at the pub, in case you’re thinking I’m getting above myself). She said we should have lunch and I would have dismissed it as one of those “oh, we should get together sometime” things but she was adamant on reconnecting and we started having lunch regularly on Mondays.

This is the friend I can say anything to and she will be nothing but optimistic and encouraging. I told her about my dream to open a bookstore (called The Last Book Shop and I have the perfect location - anyway) and she was nothing but supportive.

I tell my “yes but” friend the same dream, and she says “but what about parking?”  She would also be concerned at my complete inability to finance said book shop. Whereas my other friend will indulge my flights of fancy and give me ideas of what to put in the store.

These two friends don’t know each other, but that’s fine with me. I think I’d rather keep my pragmatist and my flights of fancy friend separate anyway.

That way, I can indulge my daydreams, but still keep my feet on the ground.

4 comments:

  1. We definitely need both of these types of people in our lives! And I want to open a bookstore too and there is a lovely shop that just vacated around the corner from my house but, alas, the building costs more than my house. But maybe one day the right space will open up ... for both of us!

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    1. Kirsten: wouldn't it be nice!!! We need to win the lottery ...

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  2. Those are a good two friends to have! Two of my oldest friends, people I've known since we were in fifth grade, are exactly that dichotomy for me, and it's so fun to hang out with them even now. I can always count on one of them for her enthusiasm and the other one for her sensible follow-up questions.

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