Things are a bit dead at the minute. Work is quiet, because it seems that everyone is on holiday or about to go on holiday or just back from holiday. My birthday is over it and I noticed last night that the nights are drawing in and people keep saying that they are looking forward to autumn, which I don’t approve of at all.

I’m doing much the same as usual, keeping the flat tidy, going to work, the usual things but none of it seems to be very exciting. On Friday, people kept asking what I was up to and I felt very dull indeed because I’m just doing what I do, which really doesn’t seem very exciting.

Over the past couple of days I’ve been thinking about that and asking myself why everything has to be exciting. Why does something have to be happening all the time for me to feel that my life is enough? That I’m not wasting time? Why do I have to be in constant motion to feel that I have meaning?

Of course when I ask myself those questions, I realise that I don’t. Exciting events are great but they aren’t everything I am and the fallow times are sometimes the most interesting. What I do when no-one is looking, how I fill the quiet times in my life, are more a reflection of who I am than how I behave during the big events. It’s easy to be happy and grateful and content with life, when the amazing things are happening, when you get taken out for drinks or dinner and your friends are buying you iPads. It’s taken me longer to understand the small, simple joy of being content with life when there are no fireworks to watch or champagne to drink.

At the beginning of the year I chose a word to describe what I wanted 2013 to be about for me. I chose build. It seems to me that the things I do when life is a bit dull, when I’m waiting for the exciting things to happen, is more about building than when the exciting stuff is happening. Because it’s when life is quiet, that the things I do, build the life I want.

So yes, there’s nothing earth shatteringly brilliant happening in my life at the moment, but things are happening. I’m getting back into healthy habits, remembering the simple pleasure of my own company, exercising some more, doing boring things in the house, spending time with my family and friends and baking a cakes for birthdays and so on. I’m not living the high life but that’s ok because it makes me happy to have an empty laundry basket, to feed people cake, to have a restful afternoon with a book.

So next time someone asks me what I’m up do, I’ll remember that “same old, same old” may not sound terribly exciting but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.