Nickie Muir: Twee shirts and ironing bored

Nickie Muir.

I heart the people who make inspirational T-shirts and kitten posters and then spread them liberally via the internet.

You know the sort of thing. Some kitten clutching the side of a building or something with the pastel words in italics underneath; "Just keep hanging in there".

Is it just the Darwinist in me or is it some mental disorder that I can only hear the theme tune to Frozen when I see this?

How about "If you love something ... set it free ... if it was yours, it will come back to you; if it doesn't, it never was."

I loved my four packets of pens I took in to class at the beginning of term. Obviously they were never mine even though I have the receipts.

I loved the property in the deal that went wrong - also clearly never mine and the old self that used to have matching bra and knicker sets and perfume and sauvignon blanc in the fridge instead of a kilo of mince and some dodgy looking watercress.

If only I had an inspirational poster, I might feel better about all of this. Or what about the industry of busy-bodies who make business out of reorganising other people's lives by "life coaching".

There are so many versions of Steve Jobs' thoughts on being more awesome at what we do for a living.

"The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it."

But ... really? Can I really say definitively that my "great work" was teaching or writing or looking after old people or strawberry picking, when I have genuinely felt that a perfect cake or a day picking oysters has given me some of my best moments of satisfaction?

And do we all find great work and, if we don't, are we in the life coaches' lists of humans who have never attained enlightenment?

Or is work sometimes just work and that's good enough?

Recently a work colleague received an inspiration invasion via text.

When she'd finished viciously texting a reply that bordered on the kind of hysteria you'd expect from a concert pianist, I asked for a look.

Years working in low decile schools have made her cynical in the extreme and any Pollyanna tendencies I might have possessed have withered in the Antarctic winter of her realism and general discontent. Some ill-advised individual had sent her an image of an ironing board with the words: "Ironing boards are just surfboards who got a boring job. Don't be an ironing board."

Her reply? "For every free-wheeling dreamer surfboard out there, there are 20,000 ironing boards working hard picking up their slack. Stop f*&%$*g dreaming and do something. Who's paying for the dreamers' retirement?"

She looked vaguely deranged, yet defensive, as I handed back the phone. "Surfboards are just ironing boards that lost their work ethic" poster anyone?