#365Gratitude Day 237: Before sunrise

I'm an early riser.  My alarm goes off at 5am, and I'm usually up a little before it anyhow.  This morning I'm doing some writing before sunrise, which is at 6:30.  Then I'll quickly get dressed to go running, and do a 45 minute or so workout, before I come back, shower, and get on my way to work.

That's a lot of stuff to do before my workday begins.

But I love it.  I love that my job is the third big thing I'll do today.  Don't get me wrong - I love what I do.  But I love that it's not all that I do.  

Anyhow, I love being up now, when the day is new, filled with promise.  I feel wealthy with energy, time, options, passion.  I love the contrast between how it's dark and quiet outside, but inside my brain is seething, hissing, and popping like a hot pan ready to cook up new things.

I love that contrast, and those feelings.

GOOD MORNING!

#365Gratitude Day 236: Wine before breakfast

Every morning, my cats lovingly, sweetly, but not very gently remind me that their breakfast is how I'm supposed to start the day.

I actually love this.  As I sit on my bed, putting on my socks, Yang will stare lovingly into my eyes, and butt his head against me.  I tend to anthropomorphize the things my cats do, so to me he's saying, "I love you so much Mako.  Remember, no one loves you more than me (when I'm hungry and want cat food.)"

Yin's approach is different.  She sits close by, but just out of reach.  Every time I do something (like brush my teeth, or get up to take off my pajamas), she's ready to remind me that feeding them SHOULD be the very next item on my short list.

If I make a move to leave the bedroom, they rush to the stairs, excited to follow me downstairs, to the kitchen.  When I don't go down the steps, they come back up, their tails and ears low, a little sheepish.  "All right Mako, good one.  You got us, again!  Let's all have a good laugh about it together, maybe over some wet cat food?"

I have owned these cats since they were 10 days old, and now they're over 10 years old.  We have done this little dance with each other just about every day since then, thousands of times.

It never gets old.

#365Gratitude Day 235: The instruments of my inspiration

I love instrumental music, especially soundtracks.  

I often run and write to them.  I like the way they carry me away, emotionally.  They just work their way into my head and do things to me.  Lately, I've had a few stuck in my head.  You're about to get them in your head, too.  

First, there's Johan Johansson.  I am not quite sure how or when I found his album and in the Endless Pause There Came the Sound of Bees, and particularly this song, Theme, but I'm sure glad I did.

Johansson's work utterly destroys me.  Often when I listen to it I just cry.  There's something haunting, melancholy, beautiful and devastating about it.

The other day, on a whim I started watching Star Trek: The Animated Series on Netflix.  It's surprisingly good.  The very best part of it is the soundtrack.  It's spectacular!  I stumbled across a YouTube video with lots of the music from the show in it.  I particularly like the bit that starts around 7:40 and goes to 8:30.  I can't put my finger on exactly what it is about this music, but it is stirring!  I feel like I'm in an action movie about my own life listening to it.

Lastly there's this oddball soundtrack that's a disco concept album of The War of the Worlds.  Yes, I know, it sounds like a ridiculous idea.  (And strictly speaking, it's not instrumental music, at least not all of it.)  But it's amazing.  A musician named Jeff Wayne recorded it back in 1978. There's one song in particular that really, really pumps me up when I hear it, Thunder Child.

When I feel the creative urge hit, I'll put stuff like this on, and it fans a tiny spark of inspiration into a roaring flame.  I love this stuff.

#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! ​