My birthday is tomorrow. 49 years old. Almost 50. And I often feel as if I am floundering through life. I have a Bachelor of Arts degree and I find myself far from the field I studied. Instead I am a cake decorator at Wal-Mart of all places. I enjoy the work for the most part but never imagined I would be where I am – a single parent, barely making ends meet, living in a double-wide mobile home, no romantic relationship in sight. I always thought I would be living in an upscale neighborhood with my 2.5 kids and an adoring husband – being able to afford the nicer things in life. Funny what life throws at you and where you end up. As I consider this, I realize that while I am in a different place than I imagined, I can still take control of some things that make me feel happy – like painting. Painting is a fairly low-cost endeavour and something I can do at home. And recently I discovered that I enjoy the feeling of being productive. So I am putting the two together and am planning on starting a “Painting a Day” project. My first one is this little brown duck that I painted today. Doing these paintings won’t make me rich or bring me a knight in shining armor, but it will make me happy and when you are in circumstances that aren’t the best, it is important to have the little things that bring you joy. So even though I will have very few  gifts tomorrow, I will still have a happy birthday – because I decided it would be.

06 Mar This entry was published on March 6, 2013 at 2:46 am. It’s filed under Uncategorized and tagged 50, aceo, birthday, duck, happy, joy, marsh, paint, painting, water. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.