Day 67

I worked as a floral designer for five years. Four years ago I "retired" from the business and now I help out at my old floral shop on a seasonal basis during the crazy flower holidays, which obviously includes Valentine's Day.  On Valentine's day and the days leading up to it a floral shop is madness epitomized. I don't know how to say it more succinctly than that. I'm convinced that all floral designers are at least a little crazy and most of us are closer to going off the deep end than not, and a lot of that has to do with the double punch of Valentine's Day and Mother's Day.  It's physically hard.  It's emotionally hard.  It's mentally hard.

People assume that since I work with so many flowers leading up to February 14th that the last thing I want for Valentine's day is flowers.  Why wouldn't I?  I love flowers.  I probably love flowers more than you do. I worked with them for five years after all.  During the Valentine's madness I work with hundreds of roses, but when I see a really beautiful one it still stops me in my tracks.  I would say it's hard, if not impossible, to become desensitized to beauty, even when you are surrounded by it day and night for days at a time.  It's stressful to work with flowers because some open too fast and then die, and others don't open fast enough and look pathetic, and sometimes you don't have the right colors or the right sizes, and sometimes the flowers will just not do what you want them to do.  But the redeeming factor is that they are still beautiful.

This year I made myself an arrangement with some roses that had opened too much to sell and kept it on the counter in front of me at work.  Those roses were beautiful, and no matter how many other arrangements I made I still enjoyed looking at them.  It was my little spot of joy in the midst of all of the stress and tiredness and the hundreds of orders. It's the little things like that which keep you going when you want to give up.

May you find joy in the little things.