You may not know this about me, but I have a twin; I discovered her a few years ago. We have a separate set of parents and we don’t look alike, but we are the same person in separate bodies. Twin gets me.
In short, our lives are different but we’re experiencing it through the same lens.
Twin and I have this . . . problem. It’s not a problem unique to twindom, and it’s one I think everyone experiences at some point in their lives. I like to call it ‘gerbil wheel syndrome.’
It may ring a bell, and for good reason because many people end up in a rut before they can even realize what’s happening. It’s the 9-5 grind, followed by laundry and grocery shopping on the weekends. Fast forward a few years later and you’re looking at your nicely organized linen closet with a great sense of pride at your successful adulting.
The gerbil wheel syndrome is fun at first; you get freedom, some disposable income if you’re lucky, and bragging rights as you progress through cooperate America rankings. It does, however, come with some side effects that include incredible, harrowing, obnoxious and maddening boredom. You know, the kind of boredom that makes you question where you took a wrong turn and why. The kind of redundancy that leaves you asking, “Is this it?”
It would be nice (really nice) if we could all walk into work tomorrow and quit, without a care or rent bill in the world — that oughta teach big boss a lesson about disrespecting me with projects, long meetings, and fluorescent lighting.
What if, instead, we took responsibility for what turns out to be the easiest thing to change: our attitude?
Me and Twin decided to do exactly that and adopted a mission to cure our bad case of gerbil wheel syndrome. Now I just needed to figure out how.
I consider myself a relatively grateful person. I make mental notes in my head all the time about things that make me smile. Coincidental gratitude if you will, but if you’re anything like me, you need something real that you can physically do right now to feel like you’re making an honest effort toward your goals.
A friend and colleague came up with this idea of creating a gratitude jar, more specifically a “big ass jar (BAJ).” The naming fits because practicing gratitude is no small feat {link removed}. In short you take a big ass jar, decorate it with love, and fill it throughout the year with small notes on the things you are grateful for daily using the recommended P.O.E.T guidelines (People, opportunities, experiences, things). While watching this it occurred to me that I never tried to be actively grateful in any aspect of my life. I decided to give the gratitude thing a real try with the one sectional of my life that takes up most of my time: my job.
I brought the idea to Twin and we decided that in 2018 we would make our own jar to kick off the gerbil wheel mantra of the year: Happy days at work! At the end of the year we will look through the stories these notes tell about all that went right in our lives. Our jar turned out a bit on the small side, but all is well, we simply remixed the name and SAJ (small ass jar) was born!
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You see, we can’t waste away simply because we must earn a living. We can’t begin to loathe the very thing that affords us the lifestyle we currently have. We can’t point the finger at high taxes, presidential candidates, ‘kids these days,’ and bad TV. We can’t show up every day, work, pay our bills and die. We don’t need to blame our jobs for grouchy, sluggish mornings. We can (and will) be joyful whenever we feel like it.
With this acceptably small ass jar, me and Twin will learn to be more grateful for our work and that happiness can be found anywhere, in anything. Most importantly, we will be reminded that our perspective is a choice and that the choices we make create the nucleus of our lives; a life that was given to us to do whatever we like