Just because I like it ...

"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind." - Dr Seuss

Kip posted another challenge and Jules is nagging me to do it but god knows its the hardest one so far. Talk about the "cultural cringe". Is it a kiwi thing? Don't pop you head up - tall poppies are only fit for the scythe! Don't blow your own trumpet! And a thousand other golden etceteras thanks to a convent upbringing and a slightly uptight presbytarian outlook on life!

Still, here we go. Ten things I like about myself.

1/. I seem to be able to make people laugh. Often I don't mean to but they laugh anyway!
2/. I can string two words together on the page. In fact, I often find it much easier to write what I think than to say it.
3/. I appear to have the kind of face that people, and I include complete strangers here, feel the need to tell me their life story. Trains, buses, supermarket queues...people will reveal the most intimate moments of their lives and I get it all. I have been sitting in the public courtyard at work and been moved to tears by the raw emotion of somebody elses memory, or have been priviledged to share the sheer absurdity of anothers. I treasure every moment.
4/. I survive. There are some times in my life that would be easier to forget but which I choose to honour in memory. I survived those times and learnt from them. Painfully, slowly, but I learnt.
5/. I don't suffer fools easily. This was said to me once as almost a reprimand but I like the fact that I don't. Too easy to go with the flow and accept without censorship every inane comment that spews out of some peoples mouths. Question everything! Accept only the best from others!
6/. I am hypervigilant, through a rather painful set of circumstances, and I have learnt to use it. In a not too nice scenario you'd be glad of it too - I'd have you out the door before you knew what was happening! LOL
7/. I don't mind making a fool of myself if, in the long run, I end up having fun. Think of all the opportunities I would have missed to try something new if I'd worried about what someone else thought.
8/. I'm reliable. I turn up for work. I'm there when you ring. Some days you might think I'm boring but I'm there if you want me/need me.
9/. I don't care about the crap. Yours or mine I don't care. If our houses are a mess, or our lives, so what. Who you are is what matters.
10/. I'm still here. You may never know how important that is to me and to who I am.

"I asked the others after,
the women and the men,
what they were doing with such confidence
and how they had learned their living:
they did not answer,
they went on dancing and living."
- Pablo Neruda