gratitude is a thing in the world

...that I'm going to talk about.

Okay so I've been invited to participate in another month-long blogging adventure by my lovely cousin Laura from All Things Purple. This is an exercise I've seen executed several times and I've always been intrigued by. Could I possibly be grateful for something new every day for 30 days in a row? How many unexamined facets of my life have I been taking for granted without even realizing it? Also- can I complete this task in a non-irritating way? I'm pretty excited to see if I can do it.

But let's get one thing out of the way first; Thanksgiving is bullshit based on lies and genocide and consumerism and I don't stand for it or its fake ideals. However, gratitude is an excellent concept and regardless of the time of year is worthy of further exploration. So while I will be completing this project during the month of November, please don't misconstrue that I am somehow trying to support that holiday or its hypocrisy. Cause I ain't into all that.

Anyhoo.

I actually heard a bit of a interview on NPR a couple weeks back that was exploring the concept of gratitude and the positive effects that it can have on your life. If you pointed a gun at my head I could not tell you which show it was or who the guest was or how to find the podcast so don't expect a source here. But the idea that was that the key to happiness was the presence of gratitude in your life. Which seems a bit like "well, duh". But really, how often do we actually put that into practice?

It's the common cliche that you don't appreciate the lights being on until they suddenly aren't anymore, or that the only kind of wind you ever notice is a headwind. Well this is my attempt to be grateful to the lights, even while they're still on, and notice when I've got a helpful wind at my back, even when I didn't realize it. I guess this will be a bit of my own twisted version of Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack (which is an excellent read that I highly recommend).

Okay so I'm going to start easy today and hopefully work my way up to harder things. Today I am grateful that the cafeteria at work sells coffee and greasy breakfast sandwiches because I definitely drank way too much last night and needed to something to get my guts back in order. But seriously, the cafeteria here is amazing. I never have to worry about packing my lunch or being forced to eat at the fast food place across the street. They've got a beautifully stocked salad bar, sandwich bar, burrito bar, hot lunch line, pizza station, grab 'n go fridge, soup, baked goods, snacks every day... I mean, it's insane! And it's all super high quality and relatively affordable and takes many different kinds of diets into consideration. It's amazing. So yeah, that's what I'm grateful for today and enthusiastically so. Maybe tomorrow I'll write about something a bit deeper. I don't know. Depends on my mood.

Does anyone want to do this with me? You don't have to have your own blog or anything. You can just put a new thing that you're grateful for each day in the comments. Or you can use this challenge as an excuse to start that blog you've always been meaning to. Or we can link to each other's existing blogs. Or you can just paint your whole body with human feces and do naked cartwheels down the streets of Harlem. I don't care, it's your life. But seriously, hit me up if you want in on this.