I’m a creature of habit. I’d like to brag about trying new things all the time and never being a boring old hag but I can’t. The truth is once I find something I like; I tend to stick with it. I like to think of this as a good thing because it shows I’m fiercely loyal. I read the same blogs and from time to time, something new will work its way into my repertoire. A recent new edition has been ‘Ian Brown Eats Canada’, a special brought to us by the Globe and Mail where the writer treks across Canada in order to experience the many culinary delights our expansive country has to offer.
I cannot even begin to describe my jealousy. Eating? Writing? Traveling? What more could a person ask for? Brown has the perfect job. The kind of job you dream of getting but don’t actually believe it exists. Did you ever sit around with your friends discussing what the perfect career would be? You know those conversations where you end up talking about how awesome it would be to be hired on as a paid “Executive Ice Cream Tester” or “Chief Video Game Officer”.
Don’t get me wrong, I love my job, but if someone offered me the chance to eat my way through Canada, I’d be on the road with the top down on my convertible (yes I drive a convertible with a white cloth roof, which I can assure you is the worst idea ever).
So I’m following Brown because I think his journey is pretty bad ass and his writing makes me happy. This morning I sat down at my desk and was excited to see that Brown had eaten something else and written about it. He described the daydreaming he did in between Winnipeg and Saskatoon and the fresh Caprese salad he had on the way. Later on he ate half of a terrible hamburger, a delicious fruit filled pie, and finished off with a slew of martinis once he reached Saskatoon. You go Brown.
I was thinking about how happy Brown must be until I got to the end of his article. It seems that a sudden longing for his family hit him as he took the elevator to his room. His wife, daughter, and friends are all thousands of kilometers away. So far away that no amount of delicious fat-filled pie can make up for their absence. I was hit with the hard lesson that my young and naïve self hasn’t quite grasped…. Success isn’t success if you don’t have anyone to share it with. No job or amount of money will ever fill the void of love, companionship, and friendship. We can talk about the perfect career until we’re blue in the face, but at the end of the day we should remember what really matters.
Brown puts it perfectly, “It’s so hard to be alone, to see the point and keep going when there’s no one to keep going with.”
So hold on to those in your life that will make success that much sweeter!
