If ifs and ands were pots and pans, there’d be no need for tinkers. But then, if wishes were horses, well, beggars could ride. And you know what?

I have no idea what any of that is supposed to mean.

I get the wishes and horses and beggars bit. But what have pots and pans to do with tinkering? I’m more likely to tinker with other things when I know I have pots and pans waiting for me in the kitchen.

Also, I have no idea why these two proverbs popped into my head when I opened up WordPress today. Of all the things to write about, why these?

Hmmm. Maybe it’s got something to do with the tinkering I’ve been doing instead of working on my school applications like I should. I have to write an essay on the American Dream for a scholarship application, and I’m just not feeling it right now. But then again, neither are a whole lot of other people, if my Facebook feed is anything to go by.

Like a lot of other people, I’m feeling really disillusioned with the state of our society at the moment. I choose to hope that Mr. Trump will be a good president, but unlike a lot of people, my disillusionment isn’t really a result of the election. Instead, I’m having trouble reconciling something I was raised to believe with my current reality. See, I was raised to believe that if you work hard, you’ll be rewarded. That reward might be a scholarship or a promotion or a raise. Heck, it might even only be an appreciative word or look. But still. It’s something, you know?

I’ve made a few unwise choices in my life, and I’m sure I’ll make a few more. But I’ve also made a lot of good choices in life, and I’ve worked hard to get where I am. Still, it feels like my only reward is a whole lot of stress and aggravation. Now obviously those good choices I’ve made have yielded wonderful results – if they hadn’t, they probably wouldn’t have been good choices, would they? But I can’t help feeling that there must be something more to life than working all the time.

I work at work. I work at home. I work so much on so many different things that I’ve forgotten what it’s like to work on only one task at a time, to say nothing of working on absolutely nothing at all. There has to be more to life than constant work and toil (and worrying about work when you’re not busy toiling away at it).

There has to be.

Doesn’t there?

Or are we all just tinkers, endlessly fiddling with life’s odds and ends as we try to make it all make sense?

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