What is a Better Life?

No serious crises at work this week. In fact it felt rather good; getting to grips with the planning of some upcoming operations, completing the job-specs for the two people I need to recruit and starting to plan our projects ready for the next financial year. At one of our lunchtime seminars I also got to hear about how the work on the 2012 Olympics is going; in amongst the inevitable politicking between agencies there’s some really quite clever ideas being used to get the extra tens-of-thousands of people around London on time every day.

Apart from Monday night, this week has been fairly quiet socially, with me coming home and sitting on the sofa for the other weeknights. I haven’t exactly been doing nothing, but then there’s not much to blog about either.

Brett had an interview with a company not far from our office yesterday: a small start-up company looking to take on a couple of full-time Ruby programmers. At lunch afterwards he seemed generally pleased with how he performed but won’t hear until Tuesday whether he has got the job.

Today at lunchtime I’m on a train up to my parents’. I’m off to my old youth group reunion tonight. Not really sure what I’m expecting from the event. Of the list of forty-six adults who’ll be there, I recognise less than half the names and, of those, there are few that I either am not in touch with independently or whom I don’t remember much more about than their names.

I think there’s a certain one-upmanship at the back of my head though; I want to go back home and amaze all these people with how much better my life has been than theirs. That’s not a particularly edifying motive but I think it’s a strong underlying stimulus and in a way it’s rather therapeutic facing it; I'm only recently realising how insecure I was as a youth. Comparing my state of mind then and now, I am happy with the person I’ve become. (Well, apart from the teenage-insecurity-revenge-desire I’m clearly still carrying around…)

Whether my life has turned out objectively ‘better’ or ‘worse’ than those of my teenage peer-group is academic when most of them are effectively strangers now and I have a very comfortable lifestyle with a loving partner at my side and good prospects for the future.

I’ll be able to tell of foreign travel, exotic locations and performing with major celebrities, others will have their own stories to relate and their families to show off. I imagine Chris C will carry the kudos stakes though with his action-hero anecdotes. I am going to simply try and enjoy the hot-pot and apple pie and the happiness of others (even though I know that, at the back of my mind, some part of me will still be keeping score.)