In what can be viewed as both a positive and a negative of the Age of White Noise, social media has given us the opportunity to invent new selves - sometimes, it seems, a hundred of them, to be used for different people, situations, even moods. It has given us the chance to smile when we are crying on the inside, if we aren't feeling very brave, or if we feel like we need to put on one of those hundred different selves. It has allowed us to share our despair, our wonderful happiness, our big thinking, and our dreams.

But what it has also done is laid us bare to criticism and a lack of care, both in our own actions and those of others. We cannot hide from hurtful situations. We cannot hide from what we say and do, and sometimes - achingly, angrily, and agonisingly - we cannot hide from what others say and do to and about us.

John Lennon was a wise man by the time he died, and he knew what was what when he said the words 'instant karma's gonna get you'. The Buddha had his own time of mortification - imagine what it would have been like if it had been fed back to him on Instagram, and Facebook, and Twitter?

““Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.”
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— William Arthur Ward

Coming back from time on holiday can make it very hard to get focus and firmness of purpose to the forefront of the brain. I know that in theory I am back in business mode, but in practice? Let's just say that my mind may be wandering to a more exotic locale, where there may or may not be blue skies, even bluer pools and a swashbuckling pirate.

However - back to the grind it is. And I was thinking about this last night, when an excess of 'I don't want to be here' was flooding my frontal lobe.

I am massively, massively lucky that said 'grind' is doing something that I enjoy. I have written before about having the luck - and it is luck - of being able to work in a job that I actually like. But it's more than that.

This is about being grateful for the chances I have been given. I am well aware that I have been incredibly fortunate in the business connections that I have; but you know what? I am also fortunate in that I have a marketable skill. And I honestly think that part of having said skill, and being able to make a potential living from it, means one must give out more than one takes.

I am not saying that I am going to dress in sackcloth and ashes and run around suddenly preaching to birds and animals; what I am trying to say is that if someone you care for, or whom you know doesn't have the resources you have, asks for help, and it's in an area that you know something about - give it. Don't be grudging about it either.

For me, expressing gratitude for what I am given by others on a daily basis in terms of guidance and knowledge has become essential. And the way I can do that? By paying it forward.

A very schoolmistressy post this one.

But that's OK. Because sometimes saying how grateful I am is not easy, nor lighthearted.

And it doesn't need to be. Being grateful is not always being happy; sometimes it is being realistic and simply saying what is in your heart.

And in this case, what is pumping around my chest is the message above.