This morning I got up early to watch the ISS (International Space Station) in the night-morning sky. And what made it even more incredible for me is that my 9yr old got up too!! Yes, the boy who would live in his bed given half the chance, actually got up at 6.15am and sleepily put his coat on over his pj’s to stare up into the frosty morning sky with his Mamma. (proud face)

I think it’s fair to say we are properly geeked out about the ISS and what is going on up there. The whole, ‘world is a giant ball just floating in outer space’ makes my mind boggle. I mean properly BLOWS my tiny mind. Because when I try to think about it that’s the way my mind feels. Tiny. I  don’t have the capacity to take it all in. I mean the ISS travels at 17.5k mph. It takes 90mins to  circumnavigate the world once. The whole world. Once. 90 mins.  They see 16 sunsets and 16 sunrises in one day! Yeah, I KNOW! Can I ask how your head feels right now?

As I look at the wonderful pictures the amazing Tim Peake is posting up of us down here on planet earth, a relatively small but beautiful ball in the sky, I feel completely insignificant. How can you not? I mean we’re just so tiny, mere specks, a blip, dots. What does any of it matter? What does any of it mean? When I think of Tim Peake up there with his view of earth it shrinks my problems and my concerns down to  the microscopic size we must be from space. Part of me is keen to hang up my writing boots right now – cause whats the point? After all we’re only… dust. Hanging in the sheer empty blackness of space. (the same part of me is also quite keen to drink gin, smoke something mellow and go live somewhere hot in a beach hut, because nothing really matters, we’re all SO TINY!)

Look carefully – I promise the ISS is in this picture!

But, of course, I won’t do any of the above – not least because I love the space factoid that I’ve used as a title and think it is deserving of a story. But because what the ISS proves is that, even though we are truly lilliputian and insignificant when compared to space and other planets, it is also AMAZING what we can achieve. When we try, when the human race wants to, we can punch way above our weight. Fifty years ago the ISS was impossible. It was a dream. And now there is  a British man tweeting selfies down to earth and working on a space station some 8000 miles above us while travelling at 17.5k mph.

Dream big. It’s worth it.

P.S. The ISS Spotter app is brilliant.

P.P.S. For my friends who read this and have actual real jobs and are vomiting in the back of their throats at my geekiness and the fact that I got my 9yr old up (voluntarily, may I add) for this mornings viewing – I know, the PTA are welcome to me!