On being a little bit jealous of your friends.

In a month of my best friends moves even further away from me to chase a dream. Her last move was to London to chase fun. This time she is moving the Devon to open a coffee shop by the sea. And I am so incredibly proud of her, excited for her, and insanely jealous of her! 

The coffee shop has been her dream for most, maybe all, of the 12 years I’ve known her. We used to while about the hours at Quiksilver talking about it. But in those days it was in Leeds, and was half coffee shop, half super cool clothes store and we’d have been running it together (it was going to be awesome.) The place she’s opening now though sounds so much like the coffee shop she had in those far fetched discussions and I am so proud of how much she has done to make it happen. 

I know saying I’m jealous of her makes me sound awful, like I’m not supporting her, and maybe you think I shouldn’t be jealous of her  but I’m just going to put this out there – I’m jealous that she has the dream that she is following. And I’m jealous of a good few of my friends – the ones who have have the awesome dreams of how their life should look and been brave enough to chase them. I’m jealous that they are doing things they really love, or living somewhere they’ve dreamt of being all their lives. And the ones who get to stay at home with their dogs all day – well, lets not talk about that brand of jealousy. 

Don’t get me wrong,  whilst I do love working in digital marketing (and it means that I can help said friend with a website and some social media training), and one a good day I love living in Sheffield but I remember the dreams I had as a child to be a writer, or a marine biologist (although I think this was more to do with my love of the sea than anything else!), to move to Vancouver, to live in the mountains. 

But I don’t see this jealousy I have for my friends as a bad thing – I’m seeing it as an opportunity to channel a bit of this jealousy in to working on some of my dreams? What do you think? Is it wrong to be jealous of your friends sometimes?