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Thursday, March 12, 2015

Twenty-Three Things I Wish My Mum Told Me






I don’t know about you but I hate inspirational quotes. 


They annoy me greatly.

At my lowest point in life, as an unemployed, divorced, single mother of five primary school aged children, my favourite quote (which I stuck on the bathroom mirror) was

“The light at the end of the tunnel are the lights of an oncoming train.”

For some reason this gave me hope. It was comforting in some sick sort of way. If I expected the worse then I wouldn't be in for any nasty surprises. Thankfully, things did get better. Nonetheless I still gag when I see over-optimistic and unrealistic platitudes plastered all over my Facebook page.



1. Challenge yourself with something you know you could never do- a fruitless exercise. You can challenge yourself as much as you want but you already know you can’t do it… duh.

2. It is never too late to be what you might have been- except young and fresh again, or a classical ballerina or the next up and coming lingerie football player.

3. All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them- but when you see a cliff don’t be silly and brave thinking you can fly off it by flapping your arms really hard like you did in your dream last night because it won’t come true and you’ll most likely hurt yourself a lot.

4. Life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it – and 60% studying for that maths test in Grade 10 because what you ending up doing with the rest of your life is 80% how you do at school and 20% about how pretty you are... whether you’re a male or female.

5. You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take- which to me means you’ll have less of a hangover the next day.

6. If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door- but add a peep hole in case opportunity is trying to con you via a pyramid selling scheme or a new phone company contract.

7. Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavour- and failure tastes really sour so success must sometimes be a lemon.


8. Luck is a dividend of sweat. The more you sweat, the luckier you get- unless you’re trying to pick up in a bar or hanging by your hands on a metal pole over a river of hungry crocodiles.

9. What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight–it’s the size of the fight in the dog- unless you’re a Chihuahua fighting a German Shepherd.

10. Many of life’s failures are experienced by people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up- but if they had known they would have kept on going and ended up as a success and wouldn’t be counted among the failures so the advice is still relevant… I suppose. 

11. I will not follow where the path may lead, but I will go where there is no path, and I will leave a trail- yeah, so someone, anyone can find me and rescue me as I stumble blindly in the shrubbery, covered in mosquito bites and dying of thirst.

12. I haven’t failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work- and now, after all that wasted time, my life is almost over so I guess I failed after all.

13. It’s not whether you get knocked down, it’s whether you get up- because if you don’t get up it means you’re probably dead or critically injured but you shouldn’t get up anyway until it’s been confirmed you don’t have a fractured disc because you could injure yourself further by moving.

14. That which doesn’t kill us makes us stronger- but sometimes what doesn’t kill us makes us so weak we’d rather be dead, or at least in need of an entire weekend sleeping and eating toasted cheese sandwiches watching Seinfeld repeats.

15. The only thing we have to fear is fear itself- well it’s not the only thing. There’re also spiders, snakes, earthquakes, death and seeing your boyfriend’s severed head being bounced by a madman on your car roof but I guess fear is pretty scary too.




16. Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned- unless you actually throw it then it might hit them and that would be funny and quite therapeutic.

17. The best way out is always through- unless you’re on a bear hunt and you have to go under it, over it, in it, etc.

18. I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody- except your boss, the taxation department, your parents and everyone that reads your stupid blog.

19. Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted- which I think means money doesn’t count but you can’t count your health and family. But you can count your family. One, two, three, four, five, six… there, done it.

20. It wasn’t raining when Noah built the ark – but it was raining when I was sitting at work today picturing my only clean sheets on the washing line so Noah must have been really psychic or had higher connections with the BOM than me.

21. The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra- annoying five letters.

22. What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say- especially when you’re talking to me while you’re stuffing things down the damn garbage disposal.

23. Actions speak louder than thoughts- Well get off Facebook and go and save a frickin rescue dog or something.

24. If the facts don’t fit the theory, change the facts- this is the backbone of every principle I’ve let guide my life thus far. Can you tell?




Scotto read this and told me I’m a bitter and twisted old woman.

Do you agree with him or are you sick of these platitudes too?