Grateful

My sister has been sending me daily reflections and one that has stayed with me is the story about [coincidentally] two sisters called Martha and Mary.

Martha had invited Mr J to her house and as she busied herself serving, Mary was listening intently to what J had to say. 

How often to we become so busy in "serving" other people's needs, whilst with good intent, that we do not take the time to find peace within ourselves and to listen. 

These days I have to remind myself to listen. Can you imagine that? This is coming from someone who is naturally inclined to be a listener and who enjoys hearing other people's life stories. 

Even with my furchild, sometimes he has to move my phone away [a smart labrador he is] and I physically have to remove myself from technology to spend time with him. 

And if it has not been for Gene's persistence in making sure I come home at a decent time, I know I would be doing even longer hours at work.  

It is becoming quite overwhelming. Between jumping ocean deep into my new role [of which I love] honeymoon researching, designing my wedding dress, managing a new team, budgeting for a million and one things that we/I need to save for, signing onto every credit card [following days of research] that will give us more frequent flyer points, mental noting ideas that come to mind before they escape me, finding a dog sitter, feeling guilty about finding a dog sitter, arguing about not being able to find a dog sitter, negotiating with the dog sitter and writing a review on the dog sitter. 

Then coming to realise that I have not been as grateful that I should be. And feeling like I should have done less to do more. 

All in all, a few good lessons learned:

1. You can transfer your velocity points to krisflyer.

2. You can find and book the same reward seats with much lesser velocity points when you speak to someone at the Virgin call centre than online. And it is worth losing 60,600 points [that you worked really hard for] to retract your original points and rebook your flights [and book more flights].

3. You can earn a heap of points by signing up [and managing closely] credit cards affiliated with airline frequent flyers that waive their annual fee for the first year. Remember to log the date your card becomes active and cancel before the first year ends. 

4. If you have forgotten to log your sign up date and you find out the hard way after they have charged you the annual fee, remember... everything is negotiable. 

5. When booking a long haul flight that has multiple stops for re-fuelling, try using the multi-city option with your Qantas frequent flyer points and you may be surprised to find that you could get one of the shorter legs on business class. Yes, you may have to hussle with call centres at times to find this out. And yes, you can buy qantas points to help boost you to those seats as you become desperate to experience at least a little luxury. 

6. Acknowledging that it happens. When you have spent over three months planning every detail of a wedding overseas to find that it will not happen. It happens. And you and your partner will learn to be a lot more tolerant of each other as you plan the no back up back up plan because you both now clearly know what you want. 

7. Three letters. I. P. L. for you body hair ridden individuals. Oh, and three words to save you from blasting a series for profanity in your second session... use emla cream!

I am tired but I am...