Here's a double-shot for today. My friend Devin is grateful for my gratitude, which has in turn inspired him to start blogging his too!
Trying to make my life a little more meaningful and many of the suggestions explain that writing a journal is a good practice. A good friend of mine explores this daily on his blog with daily journals called 365 Gratitude.
So now I'm grateful for HIS gratitude about MY gratitude. It's gratitudeception!
Seriously, I'm grateful that what I do helps others
We're moving.
Missy, my sister-in-law, and I have lived in the same house now for two years. It's been a good place in many ways, but just didn't fit us in a lot of ways. First, there's the fact that our current house has an absolutely ridiculous amount of stairs. (Plus, it's actually ON TOP of another house - that means, you guessed it, MOAR STAIRS.)
Buying a big load of groceries and bringing it inside is like an exercise in casual sadism.
Plus, there's the parking thing. When we first moved here, it looked like the parking for guests was plentiful. But the homeowner's association changed the rules on us, and made it really difficult to have more than one guest with a car.
For a polyamorous family like mine, that's just not going to fly.
I could go on at some length about the various ways this house is just ill-fitting, like a pair of jeans that's just not quite big enough, or has a strange inseam. But the heck with that. A little while back I found a GREAT house. It's pretty much perfect. It's a bit further south than the one we have now, and it's kind of in the country, which means a longer commute for me on the days I'm in the office.
But I don't care. This thing is BEAUTIFUL. It's got LOTS of room. That's important for a lot of different reasons. My sister-in-law really gets a whole suite of rooms to herself, which is awesome, because she doesn't have to feel like she's stuck in one-tiny-room-living-a-reclaimed-life. My wife can finally have that Twilight room she's always wanted, and a place to garden. There's room aplenty for us to have poly family members over, and for necessary noisy and sexy things to happen and still allow for privacy. The development is beautiful, and there are parks with running trails not far away at all.
It's just right.
Oh look another long stretch of not blogging.
I guess I was just waiting for something special to get me out of that rut again.
Here it is:
Man, I love Greg Proops. He's this very liberal, very snarky, very smart, well-dressed comedian who travels around the world doing stand-up.
He records said stand up into a podcast called The Smartest Man in The World. It's wonderful. I hadn't listened to it in months, and for no discernible reason decided to put it on for my commute this morning.
I haven't laughed this hard in ages. My girl Katie and I saw him once live, in DC. We're going to need to do that again sometime.
I've been sick for a while, and it knocked me for a big loop. Everything habitual and systematic I've been doing went right out the window. Mindful eating, decent sleep, regular exercise all got canned.
I finally feel better though. Spent some time writing a day or so ago, which is always a good sign, for me. And today, just now in fact, I swam for a half hour.
I'm so grateful for this. Grateful I can do it. Grateful that the doing of it is enough. Grateful that the choice I make in this moment is the most, in fact the only choice that matters.
There's a Buddhist term for this, shoshin, or "Beginner's Mind." It means embracing the moment, being eager to be present and participate wholly in whatever life has for you.
Every time I experience this feeling, I'm grateful for it, and every time it feels like it's the very first time I feel it.
That's because, in a very real way, it is the first time.
So grateful.
