Today I am grateful for authenticity.  In my life I’ve vacillated between full, brazen oversharing and wearing a mask that conceals nearly every part of me.  I’ve been anything and everything for everyone and I’ve also stood my ground.  I think that makes me pretty human but it also makes me pretty hypocritical—I guess hypocrisy is part of humanity too.  I’ve always been able to see middle ground, both sides of nearly any argument and get to the point of what the parties involved were trying to accomplish and what they were saying as well as where one or both were misunderstanding each other.  I prided myself on being a pretty straightforward person as far as telling others when they were misunderstanding something and getting them on the right track.  But I struggled to find that level of acceptance for myself and that, in turn, made me not accepted by others.  I was a chameleon, adapting and fitting in to any group, because I could understand and relate to people—but they didn’t relate to me, and I never understood that just because I understood someone it didn’t mean that I belonged or that they fully understood me.  People didn’t always read other people like I did.  I used to think I was bad at picking up on social queues but the truth is I was so overly sensitive and in tune to others that I was aware of their shifts before they were and it made them uncomfortable, and because I could fit in everywhere, no one knew where I really belonged—and I didn’t either.  These first 11/12 days of the year have reminded me how things feel when we are completely aligned and walking in our authentic self.  Not trying to fit in anywhere, just being.  That gets us further than trying to manipulate or fold ourselves into someone else’s definition of who we are.  It also gives us complete control over our direction—and it feels good.   

Today I am grateful for defining priorities.  Oh, my friends, anxiety and ADD are a bitch as I have so often shared/lamented/exalted.  I love the creative energy I have and the surges I get where ideas pour out of me, and when I’m in that zone, time doesn’t exist and I feel like I am on a high.  It truly is a gift.  ADD, however, makes it hard to capture the moment and follow through on a lot of those ideas and anxiety meets ADD when we are trying to accomplish all of these tasks that our wonderful, tuned in, antennae have picked up for us.  I started writing down the actual break down of some of my goals—steps, dates, actual assignments/projects, etc.—and it is something to see the month fold out before you.  This is probably not a revelation to many of you but I was never a person who defined my time and when I did I was vague with it or I let myself slip and not follow through if something else came up.  I realized over 2024 that I can accomplish a lot—I did a ton of new things and I made a lot of progress in my goal areas but I also saw how much further I had to go.  And for the first time I didn’t panic.  I saw that I could get there as long as I refined a few approaches, got clear on who I was and what the goal was, and then put it to paper so I would remember and commit to what needed to be done.  I’ve been grateful for priority before, but that was priority to a short term thing—this is a bigger picture, a vision coming true. 

Today I am grateful for collaboration.  Yesterday unexpectedly saw my husband and I starting a remodel on the basement.  We’d been talking about rearranging things for a few weeks but we have some larger items that slightly limit what we do—and the previous owners of our home had the weirdest insulation all over the walls (we have a look-out basement) that was, unfortunately, obliterated by mice over the years so we had been talking about taking it down as well.  And, of course, there were things we store in the basement that needed to be organized-again.  Life is funny that way, as soon as you have something put together more stuff seems to seep in and create more of a mess.  Regardless, we needed some racking for a few of the things we still need to store and I had to reorganize some things that I had to phase out.  We had an amazing time planning out the new layout and what we wanted to do, going through all the options we’d been thinking of, and, honestly, it was really nice to start going through stuff to start organizing again.  There were boxes of things I’d been convincing myself I wasn’t ready to get rid of—and truth be told there were things I’m not ready to get rid of—but it was beautiful to go through it and reminisce, and not nearly as painful as I’d been thinking.  Now we have a horribly messy basement but an awesome plan to make it what we want, and we have reestablished our teamwork and connection.      

Today I am grateful for blessings.  The meaning of that word falls into religious connotation, stating “God’s favor or protection; a prayer asking for God’s favor or protection; a favor bestowed by God, thereby bringing happiness.”  I look at blessing as a gift from higher power, spirit, as well as others—and sometimes others are the blessing.  As I sort through the history of my life in order to continually shift on the right track, I see everything I’ve held onto.  I see all I have been gifted and granted and put to good use in this world to open up additional options.  I have so much gratitude, not just for the things we have, but for the opportunities this life has afforded us, me.  I am grateful to have the choices I do, to be able to create, to receive and give, to live without strain for the daily necessities, and now, I am incredibly grateful to shape a future with those blessings.  I am grateful to be able to put all of my words and work into context and practice and good use for my family and those around me.  I am grateful to turn the blessings I have into more blessings.   

Today I am grateful for desire.  Desire is a delicious word, suggesting something slightly out of control but fully carnal, the need for something we want we can’t explain.  I don’t care if this is on the most basic physical level or in how we live our daily lives, desire burns and provides energy and it consumes us at points.  The fun thing about the burn of desire is it never really burns us.  It can take over at times but it is in the best possible way.  Whether in love or in design, desire fuels creation and passion.  Desire is passion to the next level.  It’s a wanting that pushes us forward and when we get the results we want, it is the most satisfying feeling.  Sometimes we don’t know the next steps to take but we look to the thing that feels right on the path toward a larger goal, and we let that passion take us to where we need to be.  Desire at its peak is one of the most exciting things in the world.  We are lucky to have such encouragement and motivation toward things and to feel the pull to it.  I’m not suggesting we blindly follow every whim we have, but I am talking about enjoying it whole-heartedly.  Let us be consumed by the things that give us joy so we can produce more, so we can feel more, so we can share more.  Desire is fuel and creation is the work behind it and the results are completely up to us and how we put that desire to good use.  Desire has brought me many things in my life and I stifled it for too long, so now as I learn to work with it and go with the flow of it, to admit what it is that I want, I thoroughly enjoy seeing the results of where it takes me—and I like the way it feels.         

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead