Hooked

You know that feeling when you're reading a book that hooks you right from the start and you just want to keep reading it all the time and things like feeding children and going to work are mere distractions to get through as quickly as possible so you can get back to reading?  It happens all too rarely these days, maybe I need to pay more attention to the books I am choosing.  A Little Life and My Absolute Darling were the highlights of my 2017 reading but so far this year it was slim pickings until I came across Asking For It by Louise O'Neill. 

I flew through it, stopping only to throw the occasional after school apple to the kids.  It was brilliant and awful and terrifying all at once.  Forget Pride & Prejudice, Asking For It should be on the required reading list for secondary school students.  In this day and age, surely it's more important for young people to learn about consent than alliteration or pathetic fallacy.

The death of initiative

I am a practical person.  If I see something that needs doing I do it, without needing to be asked.  Common sense you might say.  I don't think of this as a particularly unusual personality trait.  Well I didn't until recently. 

In the last week I have encountered a staggering lack of initiative.  People complain about dealing with Millennials and their expectation that everything will be handed to them.  Well I can confirm that Generation X is more than happy to stand back and watch other people take care of the things that need doing too.     

When you have volunteered to help at an event, would you stand in front of an overflowing rubbish bag and do nothing about it?  Would you watch someone else come to deal with it and replace it with a new bag without offering to help?

When you raise the possibility of getting a small thank you present for someone and have even gone to the trouble of checking what he might like, would you buy a card and then ask what now?  What do you think now?  Buy the effing chocolates too and just let us know how much we owe you.

Figure it out.  Employ some common sense.  Use your initiative.  

I am well aware that I sound like a grumpy aul one and I will admit that it has been a busy few weeks and I'm tired so I am probably not being my best self today but I've also had a gutsful of pretty much always being one of the few people who are giving their time while the majority of people are happy to take without so much as a thank you.  

Volunteering is a verb, so by definition a doing word, something that requires action.  If you're not willing to do anything why even bother turning up?