TIME MILLIONAIRES

 Phew, had some loaded days just recently my end. 

It's partly fostering, a job that never sleeps, but also life seems so much busier than I ever remember it. Not for everybody though, it seems.

I'll get to the fostering story in a tick, but first; 

I've just finished reading a newspaper piece about a growing bunch of people who seem to think they're some kind of hero because they've decided to do nothing. Yep, do nothing. Or if they do anything they do as little as possible all the while making out they're busting a gut.

They used to float around the office acting like they were working, but in the new normal they log their laptop onto a YouTube 10 hour video of a blank screen so their boss doesn't get pinged that their device has gone to sleep.

Their philosophy is that you're only here for a short time, make it a good time.

What?

To give their shiftlessness a gleam of honour they fly a rinky-dink banner for their lifestyle, they call themselves...

"Time Millionaires".

One example was of a bloke who used to run a craft wine bar in Sheffield. He worked his fingers to the bone, even missing his mum's 50th birthday, which she'd expected, because he was "busy". He worked 6 days a week from 10.am to 1am, then on his day off did the paperwork. He's packed the wine bar in and now runs a pop-up coffee stall which closes at 1.00pm. His profits are down 75% but he's happy because he can get stuck into his passion which is photography.

I guess these Time Millionaires would look at fostering and run a mile. Too much like hard work.

My point is that worthwhile work is vastly more rewarding than meaningless inertia.

When our middle foster son came to us he was in a state. Terrified, haunted, pale and weak. Semi-literate, didn't know what a toothbrush was.

He was proper daunted. 

We stayed up through the night with him for the first few months, easing him in his terrors. We had to absorb a lot of anger, only maybe once or twice letting our own exhaustion get the better and talking back. Our Blue Sky SW said our couple of lapses were understandable if unfortunate but we're only human and she stressed that the child is coming to know we are for the child.

What we didn't get wrong was to pretend we were on the job while really spending the afternoon watching A Place In The Sun while gormlessly re-touching photographs of sunsets.

So; on to this week. The child in question has just had a hectic and anxious time fretting over several things; an assesment at school, a fallout with a friend, a 'which trainers to wear with which top' misery (very real BTW) and…

Whether or not he's picked to play for the school football team.

So; it turns out he got a B+ for the assessment, his friend-falling out is so mended  that he's throwing a 'gathering' (teenspeak for 'party') at our house including the errant friend, and…

He's playing central midfield for the school team.

Now, here's my point; 'Time Millionaires' have  empty wallets compared to fostering folk. The bloke who walked away from his wine bar to run a coffee stall and take up photography is impoverished beyond words compared to your average foster parent.

But I guess at least he'll get to go to his mum's 51st birthday.

We humans are indeed only here for a short time, but is sitting around in trackie bottoms diddling your life away a "good' time?

Nah.

You want a great time?

Foster.