No one gives a pep talk like my mother. And boy, did I need one.

From time to time things happen which strike the carefully balanced walls of your life with the force of an earthquake, perhaps not exactly crumbling things but shifting their foundations – so nothing is quite what it was before, and nothing stands steady. This week, one such thing happened. It didn’t even happen to me exactly; I was on the periphery – but I felt the tremors and saw the cracks.

Perhaps these past few months haven’t been the best of my life. But you can’t hold troubles responsible for making you a troublemaker and in truth, I’ve done some things of which I am less than proud. So now is a new season, and it’s time to change. Sudden shocks can throw new lights across your life, and my height is not the only thing which could be improved… It is the only thing which beyond a doubt won’t.