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Hello, February!
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January flew right over my head and I couldn’t even catch up. Well, I haven’t even caught up with everything since my vacation. One of my two luggages is still in one corner of our room — untouched, unpacked. I’ll have to deal with it this weekend. I keep telling that to myself.
Do I sound whiny? Far from it. In fact, I am happy to achieve a few goals in January that I intended to accomplish for 2008, and it’s not even related to cleaning and OCD. [A major plus since I have always been bogged down by the details of cleaning...irked me to no end! But I feel...that I am free from those shackles!] I’m giddy, and it’s not just from the caffeine.
Tell me — What are you grateful for today? Hold that thought.
Remember me talking about The Secret Gratitude Book
There are two pages for each day on the Gratitude Book: the page on the left is for the things you are grateful for in your life at the moment, and the page across is for the things you are grateful for in the future (i.e. things you want to come into your life). I am an open-minded skeptic, have always been, and I am also a ‘tester’ and an ‘experimenter’. I’ll try things at least once before deeming it unfit for me [but I have my limits, too--no drugs, thanks.]. When I picked up The Secret
Aside from being a little skeptical, at the beginning I was also worried of running out of things to be thankful for right now. How long can I do this before I run dry? I fill out every line for each page, no exceptions — there are no more written lines of gratitude for the future than I have for today’s. So that scared me. It’s never happened, though…the river keeps flowing.
Here I am, Joy the Skeptic, telling you now that I am left speechless. Why? The things that I have been lately thanking for the current day, were the same gratitude intentions I wrote days before. I’m as surprised and humbled and just well, insanely quieted from all these. As I mentioned earlier, I’ve already accomplished some of my goals for the year after the first month. Some of these goals are part of what I’ve written down as a “future” gratitudes. The other future gratitudes were just plain wishful thinking really, and I treated them just like I was catalog shopping for wonderful what-ifs: I’ll take one of that, one of that… All absolutely positively wishful thinking, from the dreamer in me.
So here goes. A three good things I’ll share with you. They were part of my written ‘intentions’ in the middle of January:
- Driving. The word itself send shivers up my spine, but you better believe it I am slowly getting into driving again after over half a decade off driving school, and after being rear ended by a drunk driver. I’m driving! Little by little. It’s crazy and lovely at the same time.
- Gourmeted.com, me and Dan’s foodcrazytastic blog — a couple of weeks shy of two months old — has seen many thousands of new visitors and almost 5 digits of page loads. I’m floored.
- AAAANNNNNDDDD…
As I write this on my lunch break, we received an email informing us that we have been nominated for a food blogger contest — a real contest to be judged by well-known chefs and other culinary experts. Stay with me here. A few days ago, I fancied our blog being nominated for something at some point in time..someday — doesn’t matter for what — and how good it feels to be recognized for what we both share and enjoy doing. I even said, “How cool would that be?!” I actually wrote something along those lines on my gratitude journal.
As I read the nomination email I let out an audible, “What the f*ck?!” Are you kidding me?
I feel like I have an empty basket for fruits, and I was told to to pick the best fruits the farm has ever seen when the fruits are out of season. Impossible! But I set out to do what I was told, cheerfully, and what have you: a field of the best harvest with more than I can fill several hundred baskets with.
It’s true, the chances of us winning the trip to Napa is remote, but it sends my heart and imagination aflutter. Our blog of more than a month old seems amateur compared to other famous food blogs out there that have been around for years. But we can dream! Nonetheless, someone out there made us smile with that nomination. So, thank you. I’m truly grateful..
What a nice welcome, February…
Discussion
4 comments for “Hello, February!”
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Hey, congratulations on your food blog nomination! I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed for y’al!
Thanks Ellessu! Much appreciated. :-)
This is so amazing. Congratulations. I got the same journal in Dec. and It has been my news years resolution to write about what I am grateful for each day. Now, I have been pretty consistent and when I’m not I’m thankful for the flexibility to miss a day or two. This has been really helpful for me and it brings me a lot of inner contentment. I’m glad you wrote about this. Thank you.
Syd — you’re welcome. I’m so happy to hear that you have it, too, and have been getting the benefits from it. I wanted to share with you guys because well, this is something I had been skeptical about but I’m happy to let everyone know that as cliche as it sounds — it works. The positive things just keep flowing that it’s overwhelming. You’re right about the inner contentment. I feel that, too. Life is good!