When life is full of lemons continued....

Sally was what people described as a bright girl. She had sailed through her education pretty well, and had even spent a lot of her time at school helping others to do their work whilst completing her own.

She was kind, friendly and open. Hard working, honest and trustworthy. “A credit to her family,” her reports read. “A pleasure to teach.” She left school with a very good set of GCSE results and went onto sixth form college. It was always crystal clear that she would end up going to University and would study for a degree. It was deciding which subject to study that was the only difficulty.

When life is full of lemons continued

It all began after leaving university. No, wait – that wasn’t really true. There had been issues before then too. During college. But not to the same extent. Uni was where the rot really set in.

The thing Sally couldn’t seem to do at all was to budget. She never had been able to. Not that she hadn’t tried. She really had. Plan after plan had been made and failed. She had all the right intentions but somehow things never seemed to follow her plans. If she planned to put away some money one month, an extra bill would come in that had to be paid. If she had only just enough money to manage, a payment would be late and the bank charges that followed would mean she couldn’t afford all that she had to.

But the irresponsible spending – the real root cause of all of the trouble – began in earnest during her University days. It started with a generous overdraft – quickly maxed out. Then a credit card from the bank – again all spent up so quickly. The real killer though was a store card she got on a cold rainy night that allowed her to buy a new dress for the upcoming social that really tipped her over the edge.

It wasn’t that she didn’t understand the difference between right and wrong. It wasn’t even that she didn’t understand the consequences of not being able to pay off and deal with these debts. She just really struggled with making ends meet. And the more she struggled, the more kind and friendly people seemed willing to offer her a way out – an answer to her problems. Or so they seemed. In fact, they really weren’t the answers she wanted or needed at all.

When life is full of lemons

When life just throws you lemons, when your world is upside down.

What can you do? What can you say? To turn your life around.

When life don't seem to friendly, when it seems to spit you out.

Simply pick yourself up and dust yourself off and don't give in to doubts.

Life is a funny old game - it really is. Just as soon as you think you've got it all figured out and everything is planned then BAM!! Presto chango!

Sally knew that feeling all too well. She had spent most of her adult life it seemed swerving from one mess to another and feeling time, money and opportunities slip through her outstretched fingers. Every plan, every solution, every well formed idea for getting herself back onto the straight and narrow seemed to somehow go astray and leave her little or no better off than she was before it began.

What was the secret that other people - more successful people - clearly knew of but that she had clearly missed out on? She wondered this daily. Sometimes even hourly. How had she not gotten herself out of this mess already?