Graditude, Redux

In the past couple of years, I’ve learned that sometimes gratitude is the best defense against feeling blue and overwhelmed. Twice in this time span, I’ve instituted a practice of counting my blessings on a daily basis, and both times it’s been life-affirming, attitude-adjusting, and generally a good idea. And guess what? It’s time for that habit to come back into my life. As usual, I’m using this here blog as a device to keep me accountable. And since this resolution coincides with the beginning of Lent, I’m going to go ahead and make this discipline a part of my Lenten practice. I guess you could say that I’m giving up negativity for Lent. So here’s to forty days of gratitude.

And for my first trick: today I’m particularly grateful that my professor had pizza delivered for our class. It’s my second of back-to-back seminars, which means that by the time it’s all done, I’ve been in class for 6 hours straight. People, I could be more than 1/3 of the way to Texas in that amount of time. It gets hard to stay focused, especially if I haven’t brought appropriate snackage and I get hungry. So the pizza was more than welcome. And I think it helped to shift the class dynamic, which has been a little stilted, in the right direction. It was easily our best class to date. But wait—it gets even better! I got to bring a few left-over slices home, which means that this little treat has turned into two meals I didn’t have to pay for. Which is always nice, but I’m especially grateful in the wake of this week’s plumbing disaster.