This has just happened and I've had a very heated exchange with the person in question. I'm sat in the local internet cafe and some Spanish guy who I've spoken to before came in. He asked how things were going and I said "They're going well, I start work on Tuesday and I'm going to be writing a monthly interiors column for a magazine on the island". I then got the "oh life is much easier for you here because you're a foreigner!"
Err no, both things have come about because I've made them happen! And I could have moved my life from London to anywhere in the world, things would have fallen into place, they always do. Don't get me wrong, I don't expect my life to magically fall into place but good things do seem to happen and I am eternally grateful for them. When it comes to work, I'm fiercely professional and demand incredibly high standards of myself. At times it's been a pain having such high expectations, sometimes I've thought that life would be so much easier if I could just settle for a slightly more normal kind of life. But I've always pushed myself with work because I wanted to see what my potential was, what I was capable of achieving. In my international relations career in London, I had a reputation for delivering projects at the highest level, even if I'd never done that sort of project before. Someone once suggested that perhaps I shouldn't always deliver and I looked at him as if he was completely mad!
So it makes me quite furious when someone suggests that things have worked out because I'm a foreigner or I've had things handed to me on a plate (as someone once said and I promptly bit his head off!). For every single foreigner who "makes" it here, I'm sure there are five more who don't or who just scrape by, eeking out a living but preferring to live here than in their home country as the island is just so beautiful.
I could go on and on about this topic but it will turn into a rant and I don't want to start ranting. However I will say this - yes, I've had some amazing opportunities in my life when it comes to work but if I hadn't been able to deliver on what was asked of me in the first instance, some of the better things that came along just wouldn't have materialised. I'm convinced that it's your attitude in life that helps you succeed - in the grand scheme of things, perhaps I shouldn't have achieved what I have considering I failed my A levels miserably the first time round and scraped through with a couple of passes the second time. But that taste of self-inflicted failure (I wasn't exactly studying hard at the time) was enough to show me that it wasn't a good feeling! I realised that it was up to me and me alone to make something of my life (or not) and I've just got on with things! Rant over!
1 comment:
Funny...I also failed my a-levels first time around! And I too have witnessed with green eyed monster in a Spaniard...one I have done so much to help too.
Some people, of whatever nationality, feel they are badly done to and that everyone else has it easy. In fact, these people are just lazy. The person I am talking about sits around smoking pot all day and sleeping with loads of different men at night. You get what you deserve.
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