Today has been a very lazy day and I don’t even feel particularly bad about that. I’ve been really tired and more than once I’ve found myself dozing off for various periods of time. Now that it’s after 8:30 p.m. here on the East coast, I can actually contemplate going to bed, which I am quickly becoming quite serious about. Of course I have a long list of things I should be doing: reading books and articles that I’ve started and have carried around with me for weeks, some of them months. Back and forth I haul them between my bedside table and my backpack, where I carry them to work thinking perhaps I’ll read them at lunch time (if I ever really took a lunch break.) I’m really not sure what to do about this except to keep trying to make microshifts so that I set aside time in my schedule for reading. Today I actually had the nerve to add a new book onto my Kindle which is already loaded with more books than I could read in six months if I started reading and ready daily for several hours. Still, it has important information I need and so I might actually skim it.
Time appears to be quite the elusive creature these days. How is it that there rarely seems to be enough of it? A friend suggested to me that instead of writing this blog daily that perhaps I dedicate the time to doing a different type of writing-perhaps finishing my novel, for example. I briefly toyed with the idea, but in the end I keep coming back to this blog. It reminds me of the little engine that could: this is not a big deal blog with thousands of people reading it each day (I can count my readers in the dozens.) No, it’s not about quantity, the numbers of people who view the page each day, it’s about the quality: some folks, the occasional readers mostly, read and comment that on that particular day it is just what they needed to hear. No, if I need to make more time for myself during the course of a given day, it won’t be taken from blog writing time.
I am grateful this evening for simple blessings that some days I notice more than others. Today I’ve found myself wrapped up in my electric throw blanket keeping myself warm as the nighttime temperatures drop into the low 30s (which will seem warm on those January days when the times get into the teens or single digits.) On cold evenings I think of those people living out on the street, and offer a prayer to them for shelter and warmth. I am grateful and blessed to have both.
I am grateful for friendships and love in my life. Today I enjoyed my monthly Skype call with my friend Roland. It is always wonderful to connect with him, to enjoy the give and take that you have with a friend. Today I learned from him as well as offered him my advice and suggestions on a number of things he is thinking about. It continues to amaze me that God gives me wisdom for everyone else but when it comes to my own issues I can be completely clueless. I think that’s the principle of the thing that keeps us connected with one another. We often have our own answers and retain our own repositories of deep wisdom in our own spirits; but it seems to me that God hides that wisdom from us so that we seek out others who can help us access it.
My thoughts are a bit scattered this evening, my apologies for that. Gratitude remains at the foundation of my life, it is the way I walk through the world. It is why I come to this place each night to share a few thoughts, to encourage others to develop a gratitude practice in whatever form that takes. May we all find places of gratitude, generosity, compassion and lovingkindness as we walk through our days, as we take time for what’s important over the course of a given day. May it be so for us all!
