#365Gratitude Day 234: A new chapter begins

Literally.

I started working on my new novel, A Little Patch of Sunshine back in September, 2014.  I hit chapter 7 back in December.  Then life just sort of hit me in the face, and it's been slow going since then.  

Until yesterday.  I started chapter 8 yesterday.  Whatever it was that had thrown me off-track for several months, I seem to have side-stepped it.

This is a big deal for me.  My writing and creativity are like a mental barometer for me.  When I'm writing, I'm happy.  That's actually kind of hard to parse.  Is it that I'm happy because I'm writing? Well, sure.  But I have to be happy in the first place to do it.  When I'm stressed out, or don't feel confident I close up.  Ironically, the best way for me to feel relaxed is to do it in the first place.  

There's this thing my brother Spacey often quotes, "We are what we repeatedly do." (Which as it turns out was first said by Aristotle.)  This resonates with me.  It's got a very taoist flavor, and in a way an age playing flavor too.  Do something.  Like it.  Do it again!  

Today I'm going to do it again.

#365Gratitude Day 233: Resource Full

Yesterday I had the good fortune to get to work from home. I'm in the middle of putting together a prototype for something at work and was spending my day tinkering with it.  I got stuck because I was trying to use log.info("thing I am testing:" +that_thing) in a controller. I checked standard out and saw...nothing. 

In the middle of the day I had an ​appointment to get my oil changed. I dragged my iPad and my unsolved problem with me to my mechanic. 

My digital library covers all sorts of needs

A little bit of digging through one of my tech books and I found a solution for my problem! Then I spent the rest of my appointment reading smut. 

Yay for resources! ​

#365Gratitude Day 232: Pause

Thursday was a busy day.  I had a meeting to go to about an hour and a half away from where I usually work. ​

My boss, who is very good to me, let me work from home that morning.  I got on my way mid-morning and found my way there. 

After twoish hours of mind-numbingly boring meetings I got back in my car and got ready to go home. 

That was when it struck me. I'm pretty fortunate.  All things being equal, life is working out pretty well for me.  

As often as crappy stuff pops up, more often than not, my day to day life is really enjoyable.  

I spent a few minutes sitting there in my sunlight warmed car, just enjoying being in no particular hurry, before I got on the road.  

#365Gratitude Day 231: On being alive

Every so often, I am once again grateful for this thing I'm sharing with you now.

It's a "song" sort of, a music piece created by the artist Dreaming in the Void, using elements of a spoken word lecture by Alan Watts, on what it means to be alive.

Every single time I listen to it, without fail, I feel bliss.  

Just last night on my way home from work, I was talking to my friend Andrea about the music.  So this morning I listened, and shared it, first with her, and now with you.

Andrea and I have a very special relationship.  We're friends, we love and care about one another, all that stuff.  

But we also are each other's spiritual sounding board.  She's the person whose spirituality most closely resembles my own.  We're both obsessed with mindfulness, eastern thought, Taoism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Hinduism, and how they apply philosophically, to modern, western lives.

On a fairly regular basis, we also call one another on our shit.  When I fee low, I call her up, and she gently, kindly, slaps me around a bit.  I do the same for her.  It's almost eerie how things I have going on in my own life mirror hers.  We're almost always in lockstep about the things we need from one another.  Something I've just focused on will turn out to be something she needs to discuss, and vice versa.

I'm grateful that through sharing our practice with one another, both our lives improve.

#365Gratitude Day 230: After a great date night

Yesterday I was grateful all day for what had happened Monday night.  It was the night of the mysterious date night Missy had told me about weeks before.

I got home, and we went out for dinner.  The mystery surprise is that it wasn't just dinner though!

We went to this special event where you get drinks, appetizers, and take a painting class as a couple!  

It.  Was.  Awesome.

What made this particularly special for me was that Missy picked this particular class on this particular night because we would be doing The Great Wave off Kanagawa by Katsushika Hokusai!  It is my all time favorite painting.

What a super thoughtful, sweet, and romantic thing for my wife to give me.  I love her so much.

Want to see how our paintings turned out? 

Here's Missy with hers

I call mine "The Minor Shark Off Kanagawa".

What a great night.