The Small Pleasures in Life that keep Me Sane

While working away from home it is surprising how small things take on a major part of your life. You have to have some type of hobby or past time to keep yourself from going stir crazy, personally I tend to surf the net and watch my wildlife. I have almost gotten into a routine where I wait for the clouds to clear before I go butterfly rescuing as before the sun comes out there are few butterflies before this. Today I removed a huge amount of moths from the screens and when I took them to the release point I noticed that there were many of the Roadside Hawks circling round the plant, I did eventually count 23 of them plus one vulture. So I emptied the bag of moths and several made a break for freedom and flew high and away only to be swooped upon by two of the hawks. I felt pangs of guilt as the birds were eating my rescued moths that had been tapped by my units and I had basically fed them directly to the birds. But the birds are so beautiful I don’t harbour any anger towards them. I spent about 20 minutes watching the hawks just circling and playing in the thermals over the two gas turbines and separation units. This sort of sight doesn’t happen very often and I felt privileged to be seeing something very few people will ever see. This made me feel a little bit happy even though I am starting to get ready for leaving and having my 4 weeks break at home. The food in the canteen is pretty nice and typical as I have said before and the choux pastry is the highlight of the week and tonight was the choux pastry delight, this is the crazy thing I said about the small things that make you happy, I was ecstatic about the choux pastry. Head over heels with pleasure with my little mouthful of soft squishy high calorie crap, what a silly man I though to myself as I was espousing the delights of choux pastry to my American colleague. This is the sort of thing prisoners must adopt to save their sanity when knowing they have a long stretch inside to serve. Keeping life in prospective and realising that the small things are that count, not the money or the job but the small insignificant delights that lift the soul and keep ones feet firmly on the ground. I think I would prefer to be overwhelmed with stimuli in Brazil though and not to have to think about the small things. Screw the small things I want to feel like a king.