I am weary tonight. It is the end of a really long, trying week. I am grateful to still be standing at the end of it, though in some ways it hasn’t been any worse than any other really long, trying week. I am reminded that everything really is relative, and how something appears to be in a given moment is totally a matter of perspective. Viewing things from a grateful perspective causes me to look for and find something good in the midst of what might otherwise be chaos. I have maintained a posture, over the past 300 plus days, that there are many blessings in my life and in spite of the challenges also swirling around my life, I am grateful.
Someone commented to me recently about my blog stating, “Wow, you are almost at a year.” I am still a little less than two months away–56 days, but who’s counting–before I can say that I’ve written a year’s worth of lessons in gratitude. I’m not sure I’ll make it. While there’s a lot to be said for reaching a particular milestone, there could likewise be much said for not reaching it. I wrote this blog for 227 straight days before I took a brief hiatus from it. On that particular occasion I had decided that it was more important to write when I had something to say than to try to keep an unbroken string of consecutive days writing. I had run out of steam and had been unable to push past the wall that I had run into enough to write a decent, coherent blog. Over the past week as circumstances, time, and my lack of energy have collided, I’ve found it difficult to be coherent. Many evenings I fell asleep with my fingers resting on the keys of my laptop as I worked on this blog. (It’s amazing how many z’s one can type when one’s finger presses down during sleep…)
I am grateful for relatively simple things today: like sleeping in until 8 a.m. It was so glorious, I might have to try it again tomorrow and Sunday, if that’s not getting too greedy. Even after sleeping in so late–relatively speaking–I was still so tired driving home from an afternoon appointment that I had to really focus on keeping myself awake. I am grateful that I was able to get home in one piece. I am particularly grateful because driving while exhausted looks and behaves very much like driving while intoxicated, and can end just as badly. I’ve had many recent reminders of how driving in any kind of impaired condition can have serious consequences. I am grateful that after nearly 40 years of driving I’ve been able to remain safe and have had few incidents, accidents or other mishaps involving a car. I do plan on getting some more rest this weekend so I can feel comfortable and refreshed driving.
I hope to get back into a routine this weekend and into next week. Several events and activities disrupted my “normal” flow of life over the past few weeks. I look forward to getting it back. I have a lot of thinking and planning to do. It feels like I need to be about the business of seriously figuring out my “what’s next” soon. A lot of things are in flux at the moment and I am looking to figure out how to settle things down. In the midst of all the transition, I’ll keep looking to gratitude as my anchor. It has held up pretty well so far, so I don’t reckon I’ll change it at this point. I am looking forward to reporting the positives that emerge over the next few weeks.
