The Extra Challenge

These past few weeks I have been extremely busy and therefore simply did not have the time to drink coffees or eat petit fours in pretty patisseries. Juggling work and a child, and getting that right next to being a relatively good girlfriend, sister, daughter and friend is a big enough challenge as it is. It has taken me a few years to achieve certain things, one of them being that my closest friends (I've lost a few in the process) and family now support me in my work as a writer. But then there's 'the others' – the people who somehow do not understand. Despite you going at lengths to apologize and explain why this week, and only this week, you need your time and focus, still these people get angry and upset with you for not having been cute. I've been trying to figure out why. And I've come to believe that it's only because I'm a woman. If I were a man, the entire world would be tiptoeing to my every stressful deadline and loving me for being so busy. Not so when you're a woman. I think it all starts here: when a little girl enters a room, we all 'oooh and aaah' at how pretty her dress is or her hair clips are. And we compliment her for being nice. Nobody ever tells a little boy how pretty his pants are. But when he kicks a ball, really really hard, we exclaim, 'well done! Kick it again. Maybe this time you can even kick the ball over that tree, into the sky, up to the stars, past the moon. Go for it, the world is yours.'