There are 31 days until New Year’s Day, 2014. This means that my recent calculations are off and that Day 900 on the blog will occur on December 30, 2013 instead of on New Year’s Day 2014. In my defense I need to say that I was looking at a New Year’s Day Countdown clock from somewhere in Europe or perhaps Australia where it is already well into December 1. I must confess that I like to end things in neat packages, which is what made Day 900 such an appealing day. When it had appeared that Day 900 would occur on New Year’s Day I could not have thought of a neater package with a pretty red bow than that. What a wonderful day on which to end this two and a half year journey of gratitude. Whoops.
I never have been much of a mathematician. I had to go into my home office just now and pull out the December calendar and write each blog number–beginning with Day 871–on each day of the month to indeed verify that Day 900 will hit on December 30. My sister Sandy would no doubt insist that this is a sign that I should keep going and wrap things up on Day 1000, but I am not convinced of that particular sign. I informed her that I was fairly sure I didn’t have the additional 100 days of writing in me and that it would be all I could do to get to 900 without spinning the wheel every day. Of course as I close in on 900 it feels like it is getting here awfully fast. In any event, the challenge will be which neat package do I want–the 900 day package, which has me wrapping up on December 30 or to go into the new year with gratitude-filled New Year’s Commitments (I don’t call them resolutions, and even commitments is a bit stronger than what I usually come up with) but end on day 902. A nice sentiment, but not a nice round number. A thousand really is a nice round number. Just sayin’…
Tonight I am grateful for the written word. At one point around 18 months ago I began downloading these blogs, pasting them into a Word document and printing them out. I printed out the first 200 days of this blog and it came out to be over 200 single-spaced pages of text on 8-1/2 by 11 paper. You can imagine what day 201 through 800 would end up being. Even accounting for several reposts when I’ve spun the wheel (which I did for the first time on March 27 of this year), that’s a lot of words, a lot of pages, and a whole lot of gratitude. I am really not intending to brag, honest. It’s just that every once in a while I reflect on the energy it has required to write this blog every day for 870 days (642 in a row after the brief hiatus between day 227 and day 228). There have been days when writing has flowed easily and effortlessly, but more often than not I have stared at the empty window, the cursor flashing and no words coming. The Muse fails me and I am left circling around this theme or that before finally landing on something.
I have said this many times: I always have many things for which I am grateful each day; everywhere I look is a blessing in one form or another. The challenge has been to describe what I’m seeing and feeling in ways that make sense to a reader, that might be remotely inspiring or interesting. There have been times when I’ve written this blog while in significant emotional distress–sadness, depression, grief, anger all warring inside me, but gratitude always prevailed, even when I didn’t want it to. In that sense, it’s like the compassion of God, it doesn’t fail, it is new every morning. Whenever I’ve needed to draw upon it, it’s been there.
I am grateful to each person who has ever read this blog, whether you’re a regular reader, an occasional drop-in peruser, or have only ready it once. I continue to be amazed and gratified that on a particular day when my words have not flowed easily but have felt like shards and fragments of thoughts squeezing their way out of my pores and I’ve felt like they were incoherent and made no sense, someone will comment on the post saying how much they enjoyed it, how much it helped them think differently about a situation. I never know when those days are going to be, so I’ve long since ceased to judge whether or not a post is “good,” but whether or not someone got something out of it. In many ways this blog has been for me; an exercise in focusing on the many blessings in my life, particularly at a time when it seemed as though so much had been taken away from me. I have said I don’t know what I’m going to do with myself when I stop writing this blog: I like to think I’ll still express gratitude every day in some form or fashion. This has been a wonderful journey, one which I’ll enjoy for the next 30 or 32 days, depending on which neat package I decide to go with. Thanks for coming along with me for whatever time is left. Namaste.
