I have a lot of thoughts bouncing around in my head this evening, so this is probably going to be one of the more ADD (attention deficit disorder) driven blogs. But it’s been that kind of day–I woke this morning with some heaviness of heart, which I wrote out into my journal before rising and getting on with the day. It’s one of those character traits for which I’ve expressed gratitude over the months: the ability to persevere, “soldier on,” keep going no matter how hard things feel.
Sometimes I don’t feel like persevering. This morning I wanted to roll over and go back to sleep. I didn’t want to go through the motions of my daily routine– journal writing–> ablutions –> breakfast –> task(s) of the day. I wanted to sulk, to pout, to fully immerse myself in a serious pity party, to be able to fuss and stomp around the house and yell and complain at God about how much things “suck.” And though I have had some cranky moments today, for the most part I’ve put my head down and pushed myself along, managing to accomplish a few more things along the way. I still have a lot to do as I forge ahead toward what’s next, or perhaps I should say, “where’s next?” Still, I’m grateful for what I managed to do today.
Gratitude has been part of my day for more than 338 days that I’ve written this blog. I have been a grateful person for much of my life. It’s interesting because I’ve also struggled with depression for much of my life. These past 338 days of publicly expressing gratitude came about as a way of overcoming and keeping at bay the depression that resulted from the life challenges I faced in the first few months of 2011. It has become a chronicle of sorts, a way of telling how I made sense of everything that was happening. I cut and pasted together the first 200 days of the blog into a document with the intention of exploring the idea of turning it into a book. The resulting document was 214 single-spaced pages covering a wide variety of themes. The 138 days since then likely also tell an interesting story. I think I’ll spend a little time reading the early postings. My guess is that I’ll see a very slow transformation in how I approached some of the difficulties I was facing.
I still have a way to go before I feel like I have a little breathing space and am feeling a little more secure in how my life is unfolding. It’s been a pretty wild and unpredictable ride on the mechanical bull of life, but as much as I’ve been whipped around, flailing and floundering, I’m still hanging on. Yep, sometimes I just want to spend the whole day, from waking to retiring, being ill tempered and cranky and justified in my ill-tempered crankiness. But so far I haven’t managed it. Because every single day there is something to be grateful for, to smile at, to hold in wonder, to see as sacred, to throughly enjoy. EVERY• SINGLE • DAY. And for finding myself in that place of recognition of the value to be found in life every day, I am most exceedingly grateful. What are you grateful for this evening?
