Friday, February 17, 2012
3 Gratitudes - Week 1
I began the practice of writing down 3 gratitudes every work day to keep myself positive. It is working INCREDIBLY well and wanted to share. I feel like this has been crucial to the sudden rejuvenation I have felt this week. Do it!
2/10/12-
1. I am grateful for my ability to take criticism to make myself better.
2. My relationship with my child
3. Friends who promote positivity in me and others
2/13/12-
1. I am grateful for having a job when so many don’t.
2. I get to have adventures and pretty much do the things I want to do.
3. Music
2/14/12-
1. To have my parents still with me
2. To have such a close relationship with my sister
3. Marlon
2/15/12-
1. My independence
2. Still feeling like a teenager sometimes
3. Having a strong support system
2/16/12-
1. To be relatively healthy
2. For growing up with a church family
3. The serenity that comes from knowing you have people that love you.
2/17/12-
1. Family time
2. Finding something that works for you
3. Liz Phair’s songwriting
2/10/12-
1. I am grateful for my ability to take criticism to make myself better.
2. My relationship with my child
3. Friends who promote positivity in me and others
2/13/12-
1. I am grateful for having a job when so many don’t.
2. I get to have adventures and pretty much do the things I want to do.
3. Music
2/14/12-
1. To have my parents still with me
2. To have such a close relationship with my sister
3. Marlon
2/15/12-
1. My independence
2. Still feeling like a teenager sometimes
3. Having a strong support system
2/16/12-
1. To be relatively healthy
2. For growing up with a church family
3. The serenity that comes from knowing you have people that love you.
2/17/12-
1. Family time
2. Finding something that works for you
3. Liz Phair’s songwriting
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
XXXVI
One day away from your 36th birthday one can't help but be a little sentimental. It has been 20 years since I was sixteen. Wow. Sorry, Mellencamp. I held on to sixteen just as long as possible and somehow I got to be 36. I am actually kind of excited about entering my late 30's, officially. As part of this new sentimentality, I have been finding strange milestones in my life. For example, I have now been Katie McCormick only 4 years less than I was Katie Leach. Bizarre. I have been married for 15 years, only two years less than my parents made it. Weird. In 7 years I will have a child in college. Unthinkable. The thing I glean from all this reflection is that even with all the changes in plans and circumstances throughout my life there is almost nothing I would change. My childhood was about as idyllic as a kid from my generation could’ve had. (Yes, the parents broke up, but sadly, that was part of the normal track for generation X.) I loved my friends, the closest of whom are still my friends today. I had a teenage love affair with the sweetest boy in the world like something straight out of a John Hughes movie complete with dancing to a car radio. by a stream. in the moonlight. And the will-they-or-won’t-they-end-up-together conflict somewhere in the middle. I went off to college and had a helluva good time. I married the aforementioned sweet boy and had a lovely baby girl who is becoming an opinionated, good-hearted young woman whose father I love more than I did when we were dancing by that car.
What would I have changed? I would have been kinder to some. I would have thought more about how the things I said or did affected others. I would have studied more in college. But until Doc Brown actually gets that DeLorean working, I cannot change the past so I have to take comfort in the fact that I did my best. The things I did wrong were never out of malice, just ignorance or youthful oblivion. The future will be what it is gonna be. I always loved what June Carter Cash always said when asked how she was doing. “I’m just trying to matter,” she would say and I find that motivating. So here I sit on the last day of my 35th year and the only thing I know for sure is that I’m lucky and trying to matter. And in this exact moment, happy.
What would I have changed? I would have been kinder to some. I would have thought more about how the things I said or did affected others. I would have studied more in college. But until Doc Brown actually gets that DeLorean working, I cannot change the past so I have to take comfort in the fact that I did my best. The things I did wrong were never out of malice, just ignorance or youthful oblivion. The future will be what it is gonna be. I always loved what June Carter Cash always said when asked how she was doing. “I’m just trying to matter,” she would say and I find that motivating. So here I sit on the last day of my 35th year and the only thing I know for sure is that I’m lucky and trying to matter. And in this exact moment, happy.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)