A Cup of Kindness

My Dear Princess and Dear Friends,

It is New Year's Day. I do not often mark this day by taking stock and looking back, but 2021 was a special year for me. It was fuzzily bookended by the start and end of my professional relationship with Shenée, of course.

Looking back at my own blips is interesting. I was very wary of her at first. She was a manager after all. Managers and I do not tend to get along well. But my entries show a transition from suspicion to bemusement to admiration to adoration. 

It didn't take that long, and I'm still not entirely sure how she did it. 

But I have spoken at length about Gromit before, and there is no need to rehash. What I have perhaps only hinted at, is the impact the Miracle Pixie had on my life. 2021 was the year I rediscovered real happiness. 

It is not as though I was unhappy before, and if you are reading this, the chances are we spent happy hours together. 

But if you are reading this, you probably also know that 35 to 40 hours of my week, every week caused me headaches and stress, unhappiness, frustration and a black cloud of grumpiness that often followed me home and settled over my couch and my bed until 7am the next morning when the stupid cycle would start again. 

It's not like I was entirely unaware of this. I had noted how work sucked away my creativity and settled over my relationship with Caro like a cloud that stopped us finding each other. 

She felt the same way, you see. And typically the first hour of getting home from work for both of us, was consumed with the spewing of work-related bile until we were able to chomp down a grumpy dinner, and anaesthetise ourselves with TV.

It was in February, I felt my happiness levels rising and I think my new-
found exuberance bolstered my second big friendship of 2021 with Fazlyn. 

She later told me that Shenée had said, "Oh you've met Stoffie! Isn't he hilarious?" to which Fazzy had replied, um, no, he's just a business analyst. But Shenée's sense of fun and her refusal to let us be purely professional soon brought us together. 

I found myself in this strange virtuous circle, constructed by Gromit where friendship fed work and work became pleasure and pleasure enhanced friendship. 

For a while there, at first it was just Shenée/Fazzy/Me at the centre of that circle. Then Ellie (already Shenée's friend but now a member of the team) joined us and her joyous energy and radiant enthusiasm was a further catalyst to our already-bubbly chemistry. 

It was around this time that Project Bumpaddle tried to drag me away from Project Gromit and honestly my reaction to this was much more passionate than it would have been under any other circumstances. 

First of all, Project Bumpaddle was the opposite of Gromit. It was a return to all of the stupid, stupid projects I'd worked on before. And so even I was surprised how strongly I felt about resisting it. I knew how heartbroken I would be to lose what I'd just been given. 

What made me feel even more strongly, was seeing just how hard Shenée fought my corner. It surprised me at the time, but I've seen her do it for others so many times since. She gives not a shit who she offends, she's not there for them - she's there for you.

It was around this time we started to meet up outside of work and I started to think of us as a family. I acquired real, actual nieces and nephews who love me and I love them. I felt a blooming inside me so powerful that I wondered if there was something wrong with me. 

Caro wondered too. She started asking me, "What has happened to you?" when I came home, because I was full of energy and enthusiasm. Not just for my new friends, but for her. And it caused Caro a problem because she was still lost in the fog and was unable to reciprocate. You may remember. 

It was around July that the switch flipped. I think Caro was afraid to join in, for fear of losing something. And however miserable misery is, if it is what you know, then at least it is safe. But somewhere around Christmas in Greytown, she decided to give in and let herself be happy again. And honestly, I don't think we've ever been happier as a couple than we are now, more appreciative, or more affectionate.

But I can also look back to July and say that was the high water mark. In retrospect, August is where things started to go wrong. That was when Shenée's issues with human resources began to get serious. It was when that distraction caused moments of friction between us, and it was also when Caro's attempt to once-and-for-all find out what was going wrong with her hands, started gathering pace. 

2021 has not been entirely kind, is what I'm saying. 

My background fear to this downturn in fortune is that the delicate rope-bridge we constructed for ourselves this year was about to drop away. 

It seems to me returning to low-grade grumpiness would be so much more cruel, having been happy. But so far, the hope and happiness coming out of the early part of the year has sustained us. It turns out that it is not some delicate thing, this friendship and happiness, but a concrete construct. 

Friends old and new have rallied around Caro. Shenée's issues didn't just solidify my friendship with her, it also brought her closer to Caro. 

I can't know what 2022 will bring, but I'm not as afraid as I was. The friendship of 2021 is not fleeting, it won't be forgotten and never brought to mind. 

The family that coalesced around a bizarre project involving pictures of animals is going to stay with me. It is a cup of kindness that will sustain me through whatever fortune brings. For the rest of my life. 

I'll leave you with a quote that my lovely Fazzy sent me on New Year's Day. I hope you take it as a wish for yourselves too:

It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, that while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good-humour. (Charles Dickens)

Thanks for all the smiles over the past year, hope you have a year ahead filled with much happiness!

S.