Still chugging along here in ShadowLand.
I was scrolling through past blog posts looking for a picture of something, and wound up literally going through years of posts to update the gaps in my Ravelry record. As I scrolled through, I found a meme from a bit over ten years ago when there was a prompt site called Ten Things Tuesdays. Every week, it suggested a topic about which it invited us to post a list....
The one I found was Ten Things I Love About My Life.
As I wrote then, "this list of ten things is worthy of thinking about. It's so easy for each of us to voice our frustrations about the things in our lives that are annoying, irritating, disappointing, painful or otherwise unsettling. But we don't look as closely at the things that are not troubling as closely. We vent readily. We seem not to give the good stuff as much "air time". (See, e.g., the news -- there's lots of good things happening out there, but the media only shares the bad, the horrible, the dangerous, the sad, the alarming -- the rare good news is shared only when its huge)." It's still true that the news shows mostly the alarming stuff (and it seems like there's more of it than ever). it's still true that we vent readily - and as FaceBook and Twitter and other SocialMedia platforms have grown, it can feel like the bad is enlarged and repeated until that's all we see.
I try to combat that by periodically posting a daily gratitude comment on FaceBook, or at the very least keeping a Gratitude Log in my Bullet Journal. But tonight, I think I'll do a redux of ten things I love about my life:
1) My current career as a Massage Therapist means that I can still shun suits and high heeled pumps and stockings. I may not be as financially blessed as I once was, but I'm still doing okay. And I have the best commute EVER! Doing what you truly love to do is a wonderful way to work!
2) My children are still bright and talented and good hearted. We survived the anticipated rocky adolescent period, and they still manage to behave well in public most of the time. I think it's still true that they love and trust me, though in different ways than they did a decade ago.
3) My parents are all wonderful people (all four of them) who get along splendidly. My mother and father's divorce so many decades ago (I was about 10) brought me wonderful step-parents without the rancor that so many divorces seem to bring, and so my children had four loving grandparents from my side of the family. I miss my father deeply, but am still blessed with three wonderful loving parents. I TOTALLY won the parent lottery.
4) My friends. This has changed very little in the last ten years I still have wonderful friends, both here at home, and spread across the U.S and beyond. Some I first met face to face; some I first met online, through blogs or email lists. Some I see face to face often -- weekly or more; some I see annually, at continuing education classes; some I see rarely. Some I talk to on the phone regularly, some I talk to rarely. Some I "instant message with every day"; some I IM every so often; others I don't, at all. All of them (all of YOU) remind me, in one way or another, that I am connected to the world out there -- that I matter (that they matter) and that the connections we have are good things. I could go on and on about my friends, and the joys and laughter they've brought into my life. But I hate to be trite.
5) Knitting. It still brings me me a lovely outlet for my creative bent; it has given me an inlet for my sensual cravings (oh the feel of those luscious fibers ... ahhhh); it has given me the opportunity to create truly beautiful gifts that are also useful; it has given me friends, oh so many wonderful friends.
6) My job no longer allows me the luxury of taking most of the summer off to drive to New England for weeks at a stretch; but it does allow me the luxury of traveling short distances to take amazing classes with wonderful, talented people. I'm thrilled to be in a field where the problem is never finding Continuing Education I can tolerate, but instead choosing among so many wonderful options. And once a year? I get to take a vacation and continuing ed at the same time in the same paradise.
7) My Home. I am blessed to live in a lovely home, with a perfect space for my office. And after decades of decorating my home to suit people I think might come in when I entertain, I've finally started hanging things on the walls that make me happy. There's such freedom in that simple action -- that step that makes it MY home.
8) My library. Well, yes, the one in my front room, but more significantly the one here in my town. It has a wonderful collection, and is all nicely tied into a library system that means its collection is really the size of the whole system's collection. The folks happily hunt up things that aren't in the system, either for Inter Library Loan or for acquisition. The hold system there is brilliant (I put things on hold from my computer in the wee small hours. If it's currently available, the item I requested is on the hold shelf for me within 24 hours; if not, I can see how many people are ahead of me in line.) The movie selection is great. The music selection is great. The people are delightful. I often wish I could work there just so I could work with these people. I love my library! And lately, they've made themselves even better! They auto-renew my books unless someone is waiting for them!
9) My cats. I'm never alone, as there's always a friendly feline within arms reach. Sometimes, I could wish for a tad more privacy (seriously, there's usually a cat sitting on the edge of the tub while I shower), but going to sleep with a purring lullaby is not a bad thing.
10) My equanimity. I've let go of the need for things to be perfect. This doesn't mean that I'm not pushing for change in ways that I think society needs help; it doesn't mean that I accept mis-treatment or shoddy work; it doesn't even mean that I won't send an under or over cooked steak back to the kitchen. It means that I am no longer put off balance by the little things that aren't right. It also means that I spend a lot less of my energy judging other people's choices.
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