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Author's Note
by FlamX

Back to the old grind. Yep, I've thought it, as soon as I realized school was back in, work was starting again, and the traffic on the main highways made me late for my first day back after summer vacation.

That was a day where inspiration was difficult to find. Nothing went right and it wasn't easy to keep going. Did I buck up, think of something uplifting and let that improve my whole day?

No.

I was grumpy. I snapped at people I enjoyed working with and slammed things around in the kitchen while making dinner. I let my headache determine my attitude and how I treated others. My bad day turned into a bad day for everyone else around me. By evening, I didn't like myself and I'm sure not many other people did either.

What did that achieve for me? Absolutely nothing. While sitting here, working with Eukara and the Zardian team on an issue about AE women, I'm not likely to think of myself as one of those women of achievement. Instead, I see the pieces of my life that I'm trying frantically to juggle and hoping desperately not to let slip from my grasp.

Years ago, had you asked me to name a woman of achievement, I'd have thought of someone like Harriet Tubman or Anne Sullivan Macy. No, I won't tell you who they are, go look it up in a history book! Now, as I sit here with one child peacefully playing and the other one early in bed because of feeling ill, I suddenly find that I have more respect for the average, every day woman than I ever thought I would.

I sit back, and think about the way that busy mothers juggle not only their own schedules, but the schedules of their children and often their spouses as well. It's not easy to work a hard job and make arrangements for getting one child to a doctor when another has to be home early for school. There's often the added complication of being called in the middle of a work day because Mommy is desperately needed for a sick child. Nevermind the soccer game or ballet recital you've already promised to go to. Forget about working overtime. Everything that can be dropped often has to be dropped for the child's sake.

These are the same children that will later in life call me heartless, treat me with disrespect and tell me that I never do anything for them. How do I know this? Simple, I did the same thing to my own mother when I was a teenager. Experience comes too late for me to change the way I acted, but something tells me I really ought to call my parents and tell them that I'm glad they were there for me.

A person, man or woman, doesn't have to achieve great things in history to be a success. They don't have to be one of the most important people in the world and they don't have to be rich or famous. Sometimes just getting through an ordinary day is an achievement - one that should be respected and praised.