Today, like a snail or a tortoise or ummm a hermit crab, or any other creature that carries its home with them, I lifted my bags and my trusty laptop and went on my way (only far less gracefully...yes, you heard me, I'm less graceful than a snail). My end goal was a borrowed bedroom in Kent (I'm currently typing this in a princess bed, having ousted my friend's 3 year old from her room), but first I had to go via work.
Getting to work from Sian and Marc's is usually a breeze. I roll out of couch, hop across the river and I'm there before you can say skinny-vanilla-latte. This morning however the world and its weather was against me. The wind threatened to throw me off Tower Bridge, I nearly got stabbed by more than one ridiculously enormous I'm-a-smug-sod-and-therefore-can-take-up-the-entire-pavement umbrella and the puddles left tide marks on my new boots.
It was grim, but at least everybody around me had the courtesy to look equally miserable. Everything was grey and correctly adhering to pathetic fallacy (although I don't know if it's real pathetic fallacy when you're miserable because of the weather and then the weather mirrors your misery?), and then I saw her. A merry optimist that had no business being in London at rush hour, with an umbrella that read 'Rain Makes the World Grow'. Ugh. I grabbed her umbrella and started bashing her over the head with it. Well, in my head I did anyway.
So it was with such thoughts of peace and goodwill that I finally waded into work.
Two coffees and an onion bagel in and my misanthropy was fading. The world always looks better with an onion bagel. A friend sent me a link to the BBC Personality Test which, being something of a wannabe psycho-analyst, I happily completed. In retrospect I'm not entirely certain it's not a government sponsored spying tool since it asks questions such as 'how much alcohol do you drink' and 'how many sexual partners have you had'? But either way I disregarded any Big Brother misgivings and filled it out like the rest of the sheep.
The test results give you a percentage of various personality traits and tell you (if you didn't already know) how satisfied you are with your life, what your life goals are and other useless-if-you-know-yourself bits of information. Having said that, my scores actually came as quite a surprise - especially when you consider that I nearly assaulted someone with an umbrella this morning for being a bit too positive - it turns out I'm officially (according to the BBC, and we all know you can trust the BBC) pretty happy. Apparently I have 94% Life Satisfaction, scored 82.5% Health and Wellbeing and I prioritise relationships (ok that wasn't surprising - I'm moving countries for one afterall).
While it surprised me on the basis of my exaggerated anger at miss rain-is-food this morning, I realised that when I cut through the crap - when I look past trudging through London in the rain, sleeping on couches and living out of suitcases, not being able to speak to Jeremy properly and stressing about visa post - there's actually a pretty calm, pretty happy Hannah inside.
That's not to say the outer crustiness of Hannah is going to become a little-miss-perky-pants any time soon (rain sucks, whether it makes the world grow or not), but it's good to know that there's an inner smile in there somewhere.
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