I am a day late starting my annual November gratitudes. And it is late. So I will be brief, I think, though I never know once I get started writing how long I might be. Back in 2006, I packed up my whole house and all my belongings, left everything familiar, and moved to the Eastern Shore of Virginia to take a job there. I sent Jacob to college in that same week and faced, not only a whole new place, but an empty nest as well. During that first winter there, I was living in a great big old beautiful farm house, a half a mile out a dirt road, on a 200-acre soy bean farm. I loved it there, but was prone to bouts of intense homesickness and, of course, the depression that generally seeps into my bones and my psyche about this time of year and takes up residence until the spring chases it off with her flowers and green and warm. I was having a particularly difficult time that first winter on the Eastern Shore. During a conversation about my sinking spirits, my mother told me about an article she had read about gratitude and how life-changing, life-saving it can be. The writer of the article suggested starting and keeping a gratitude journal and writing daily notes on things that bring about gratitude - a particularly beautiful sunrise, a baby's laugh, a call from a friend - any little or big thing that draws that feeling forward. The writer said that we should all go looking for gratitude.

And so I began. And I worked at it. My gratitude journal from those days is here on my blog and has continued, in all sorts of forms, since then. It was a very powerful exercise and helped me tremendously through that first long winter up there in the middle of nowhere on the Eastern Shore. And it continued to help me through the many changes and trials and struggles and celebrations and losses of the next four years there and my first year back here in Boone. I am trying to live a life of gratitude. I am not always successful. I sometimes forget. I sometimes don't forget, I just sometimes would rather not do it. But when I focus on living a life of gratitude, I am amazed at how different life feels to me, how much happier it is, how much more sense it makes.

When I am driving in my car to work or driving back home, I try to remember to focus my mind on gratitude. When I am feeling sorry for myself, I do the same and, amazingly, I can stop that self-pity drain. When I am tired and aching and wanting to whine about the tough aspects of getting older, I think about how grateful I am to be as young as I am (in spirit!) and as healthy as I am, and the aches don't bother me quite so much. I know deeply that I have been tremendously blessed in this life. I sometimes just need to remember. If I forget for too long, there will generally come a trial or a crisis to remind me anew. If I let the activity of acknowledging all of my blessing slip, if I forget to say "thank you" for all that I have been given, if I get to complacent or lazy to just open up my eyes and see, my spirits will sink and sadness will likely take over. It is a daily, conscious process. And decision, too. And one that I try to respect. I am trying to live it.

So in celebration of Thanksgiving month, I would like to try to make a note, every day, of my blessings and my gratitudes. I did this last year and the year before on Facebook. I thought I'd do it smaller this year. And write it here.

In keeping in tradition with my unfortunate and lifelong lateness (yes, I will be late for my own funeral, I am sure), I am starting a day late. So here are two days worth:

November 1: Today I am grateful for the morning. Every day above ground is a good one. I am not much of a morning person. I am slow in the mornings and quiet. Not grumpy. Just not quite with it. But I am learning to appreciate mornings more. The older I get, the more I appreciate the turning slowly and that first blinking, yawning, sighing recognition of the light of the day coming in through the window. Another night is passed and here is another day, another chance, another hope. Nights are for dreaming without direction. Days are for dreaming with hope and intention. I am grateful for every morning, every day that I can begin again.

November 2: I have a sense of myself again. I kind of lost touch for awhile. A lot has changed in the past two years. And I just lost focus. I didn't lose me. I gained some new dimensions. It was like I was walking through a maze for awhile but the path has gotten easier and the ground more even and the way more familiar. I was very intensely introspective there for a time but my insides were so muddy and murky, it was mostly just like wallowing in the mud. I wasn't able to see myself from the outside. I couldn't get out of my own way! I am glad to have steadier footing again and to appreciate what I've just come through and how it has affected me, changed me, strengthened me, given me some wisdom. I am very grateful for that. I am grateful for my own strength and my own will to survive, not just as a living being, but as a living, caring, contributing, productive being. I have been blessed.

Peace and love and all that. Till later.