Mid-January Thoughts: Rumblings, Ramblings, and Half an Epiphany

by Rose David

Well, we're a little over mid-way through my month of gratitude journaling.

After the first few days, I started running out of things to be grateful about, which I understand seems like a really shitty thing to admit.

But it wasn't that I'd actually run out of things to be grateful for. It was more like I had run out of superficial answers, and now I had to actually THINK.

Because, you know, it's so easy to start with the totally obvious, stereotypical stuff. "I'm grateful that I'm healthy."

Which is true. But since I've never had to worry much about my health in the first place, I wasn't practicing gratitude so much as practicing my cop-out.

Which I'm pretty good at already, so no help needed there.

Anyway, I haven't had any brain-exploding bursts of gratitude yet. I do understand that I'm fortunate to be where I am--youngish and healthyish, living in a culture where I have the time to write and draw and, you know, stream TV shows and stuff.

But, by now, I feel like I should be more grateful on a visceral level. The more I try to force it, the worse I feel.

So, over the past week, I've started journaling my gratitude about smaller, random things. Things that make sense to me right now.

Like how my husband brought home a juicer he found on clearance. And also that he even THINKS to bring home stuff like that.

But not all is fluff! I think I have had one semi-epiphany--let's call it a half-piphany.

I'd had a frustrating writing-and-drawing day, and I was in a really crap mood when I started filling in my journal. It came time for me to write what I was grateful for, and lacking any other ideas, I wrote, "I'm grateful that I have the opportunity to try."

Because TRYING was what I was doing--NOT succeeding.

But... Yeah. After a second, I realized that I WAS grateful for this. I have the luxury of time and relative obscurity, so if I don't do something very well, it doesn't matter too much. And though I'm still an epic fail at colored pencils, all the crappy pictures I've produced have helped me better understand color theory. So, because I TRIED (never mind the outcome), my skills have grown and gotten better, even if it's not in the way I intended.

So... Yeah. There's that.

Oh, I've also started thinking about next month's challenge. I'm still too enamored with bread and cheese to go vegan just yet. So I'm thinking... A month without looking in the mirror? I was going to skip TV for a month, but then the Walking Dead should be back, I figure I'd just be begging myself to fail.