today, I am grateful.
I am now in the ‘habit’ of getting up in the morning and writing down four things that I am grateful for in my life. It suddenly occurred to me this morning that it has been 22 days since I started this (mostly because 22 was staring me back in the face after I typed it out in the title… ) In 8 more days, I am going to be finished this 30 day challenge… I like 30 days. It always feels manageable… and so far it has been. I haven’t woken up and thought, gee I am not grateful for anything more than once. I think there was one day that I wrote about when I thought, no I am not grateful for anything. I was in a dark moment, feeling miserable and sorry for myself. I won’t say without good reason because I did have a good reason, but in keeping with the spirit of the challenge, I thought more about it and did in fact come up with four reasons to be grateful. The thing is – it wouldn’t be a challenge if it all came easily.
Today though, I have no trouble coming up with something to be grateful for. Yesterday morning on my way to work, I stopped in to the local bank to get some money out of the ATM. It was early morning (around 7:20 or so) and the parking lot was empty. I pulled into a space and parked. I was getting out of the car when a man in a pick up suddenly zoomed by in front of me cutting across the parking lot to go out the other exit. I stopped, surprised, and I guess I made a confused face that he saw – because he immediately hit the brakes and started yelling at me for making a face at him. While he was yelling – I started walking quickly to the bank – just trusted my gut that things weren’t right. He kept yelling and ranting about how everyone deserved to live (which I agree with, and for my part, I just wanted to get out a bit of money for coffee without being run over by a lunatic). He asked me one question – what the hell I thought I was doing. I said – parking my car to go to the bank. It was enough to set him off more and he got out of his truck, called me some nasty words and chased me. I said nothing more and I ran into the bank (because there were cameras so if anything happened at least there would be a record of it). He didn’t come in, luckily. He must have left right afterwards, just wanted to scare me. Needless to say, he did. Sometimes, it is just better to run and not engage someone who is clearly got other issues going on that he needs to start freaking out at someone for giving them a look while they did something that seemed to be a danger to me and was…. I will be more careful regardless.
I am grateful to be able to share my photos with people still – I have had several people come up to me following the little show that I did to comment on the photos. One person came and bought a card with a photo of columbine – which he turned into a love letter to his wife. Made me smile a lot to be part of that..
I am grateful that someone – a completely stranger, shared their beautiful creation with me after I featured their work in an Etsy treasury… http://www.etsy.com/treasury/4d46fe0fe38b8eefb8f0711d/do-you-love-me
I am very grateful to Laure – the earrings are beautiful. I was touched by your kindness. Thank you thank you thank you!
Lastly, I am grateful for finding myself spontaneously dancing to a new song that I had heard for the first time yesterday. I am not a big dancer… in fact I often joke that I dance like a gnome on a donut bender – awkward and rotund. It’s not a pretty site. I did find myself busting a move to a song that I had not heard before… and I just could not help myself. I danced in my kitchen to it – while no one was watching. I realized in that moment – sometimes it is just good to dance and not care who is watching. I dare you to play the song “Waiting for the end” by Linkin Park and not feel the beat. (plus, it is a really cool video!)
~
I am grateful
1. to be able to think quickly on my feet and run when I need to
2. to be able to share the beauty that I see around me
3. for when people unexpectedly share their beauty with me
4. for feeling like dancing when a song came on…and dancing around my kitchen like no one was watching. (No one was, but still… I can’t even remember the last time I felt like that hearing a song.)
lei fraser 