fizzmeup

I have been guilty, in years gone by, of looking backwards and using what I saw, or what I didn’t see, as a reason for not doing things in my future. It’s a terrible habit, and one that I was never truly aware of the full effects of, until just recently.

In my late 20′s, I would look back at my years of work and my lack of years of tertiary study, and I would believe that it was now too late to start uni, too late to incur an education debt, too late to make a fresh start. If I didn’t have a degree by now, and I’d survived, why should I spend thousands of dollars on getting one now? If biology says that within the next five or ten years I may very well stop working full-time in order to raise a family, why start working towards a new career that might be stopped dead in its tracks before it even gets a chance to get started?

Up until just a little while ago, I would look back at the last six years of my working life and see myself consistently employed within the finance industry, having built up a decent level of experience  (despite it not being my passion), and think how can I, at 30, give up all that know-how which comes in so handy at job interviews in order to start something new?

So I didn’t study, and I didn’t think about what I really wanted to be doing – I tried to stay safe, and comfortable, and reliable.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with being safe, comfortable, and reliable – they are qualities I quite enjoy, but, I had one of those moments recently when a light suddenly came on, angels started singing and playing harps around my head, and it was all because of the simplest of phrases: Look forward. What would you do if you never looked back, only forwards?

If I don’t look back, I don’t see that it’s been 12 years since I left high school and that I haven’t really studied since. I don’t see that I didn’t get a university degree when most other people did. I don’t see that I’ve had six years working in the same industry. And, the funny thing is, if I don’t see all of that, it suddenly doesn’t feel so scary to make some changes. It’s not so scary to announce that I’m going to start studying towards a Bachelor of Arts (Internet Communications) next year. It’s not so scary telling people that I want to get into the wine industry, as a social media and communications guru, and that I am going to start working towards this. It’s actually a little bit exciting.

So, here’s to looking forwards. Give it a go – see how much you can achieve if you don’t worry about what went on in your past. I wish you luck!

I have been a flower-girl in two weddings, a bridesmaid in another two, and a maid of honour in one, and never in any of these weddings was I made to walk down the aisle before a bridezilla. I even got to choose the colour and style of one of my dresses, AND pick out my shoes completely at my own discretion! Quite obviously, my two sisters-in-law and my friends are smashingly lovely ladies.

Not everyone is this lucky though. This weekend, one of my work colleagues is being forced into a dress that is the exact same colour as a fluorescent lime-green highlighter – I kid you not, there is no exaggeration here as to how bright the colour is what so ever. Not only did the bridesmaids in this wedding have to fork out a substantial amount of money each for a dress in a colour that NO one can look good in, the price wasn’t even inclusive, so there were extra surprise charges requested by the bridezilla for a skirt inlay and the material used after the girls thought final payment had already been made.

The girls have also been told that they will need to have acrylic nails for the day. Not just a French manicure, stick ons, or even just a lovely shade of nuclear-orange to go with the dress, but actual, we-will-scour-down-your-natural-nails-and-weaken-them-beyond-repair-so-they-take-months-to-recover-acrylic nails.

Now, the dress I could cope with. It’s the bride’s day, and if she wants highlighter lime-green bridesmaids then so be it. And the extra unexpected costs may have also been unexpected by the bride. But to demand semi-permanent acrylic nails be applied for the sake of one day, when a simple manicure or stick-on’s would more than suffice? I think not. This is like asking for your bridesmaids to colour their hair or cut it shorter for you, just for this one day. Just don’t go there! Your bridesmaids are your friends, and you should want them to feel beautiful on your wedding day and remember it with nothing but fond, fizzy memories; not look back on it as the day they looked and felt ridiculous, with damaged nails and trampled wallets.

Have you been a bridesmaid? What was your experience like?