Gratitude Is What It’s All About

Thanksgiving is upon us and it is time to express my own gratitude for so many blessings.

I’m most thankful this year for the incredible event that, in my mind, has proven our country is still the country of opportunity and capable of overcoming the worst and elevating the best.

When Barack Obama became our President-Elect, the joy brought tears to my eyes. Aside from the fact that I supported Obama for President, I was overcome that in my lifetime the people of the United States of America voted an African American to its highest office.

Although I felt confident in Obama’s eventual victory for the last three months of the campaign, since Geraldine Ferraro had been the Democratic nominee for Vice President and the party lost, I had believed that neither a woman nor a black could become President in my lifetime. It seemed that ignorance, hatred, bigotry and fear would hold sway for many, many years.

So, I’m deeply thankful that my country can now lift its collective face towards a brighter, more enlightened future.

Then I have so much more to be grateful for that it would take pages and pages to list it all, but I’ll give it the old college try to hold it down to a couple of paragraphs.

With all my heart, I thank the Universe for giving me the opportunity to seek my bliss, to place me in a situation where I can write, for once without a high-pressure job to juggle while trying to tempt my muse to visit me.

I’m thankful to have a job, a place to live and the ability to pay my bills. I know that there are many living in fear of losing one or more of these things and know that I am lucky.

Thankfully, I have people who love me and people that I love – perhaps the greatest gift of all. I spoke to one of those people today, and said I never feel lonely. Wow, how blessed am I?

So, for Thanksgiving I’ve decided to spend the day alone, finishing my first rewrite on the novel I’ve been squeezing out of my brain for more than two years and feeling deeply grateful.

My very heartfelt wishes for a Happy Thanksgiving to you all!

Clearing My Head

As some of you may have noticed, I've been away. A road trip to LA and a plane trip to Phoenix, of all places. But that's not really what I mean. I've been taking a break from writing, which has been welcome but unintentional.

When I finished my first draft of my novel in early October, I felt as if I'd just done a marathon, and I had, of sorts. I had just completed 100 pages in less than two months. That's the fastest I've ever written - long term. I found myself mentally and creatively exhausted. So, I ended up neglecting everything, including my journal, which I've been very diligent about for months now.

I have a very dear friend, who will recognize herself in this simple advice, "Take care of yourself and give yourself time." I took her advice, offered long ago for a completely different situation, and now I find myself raring to go again. I'm half-way through my first rewrite and on schedule to begin marketing my book when the new year begins.

Not only am I ready for rewriting, but this weekend, inspiration came to me again, (or Shirley for those of you who remember my muse's name)and I'm working on a short story as well as being driven to blog again.

I think sometimes we pushed ourselves to do too much in too short a time frame and end up not doing anything well, and perhaps more importantly, not enjoying life. Time is an abstract notion that we tie ourselves to, chained to minutes and hours that have no real meaning in our lives.

Forgive me, I've been reading Eckart Tolle's book "A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose." This is a fabulous book, but very difficult read, which has me re-examining everything. I highly recommend it, but don't strive to read and understand everything right away. At first I had to take numerous breaks, in order to absorb the very deep insinuations about how we live and what is reality. A good bookmark and ten minutes of quiet time daily should get you through it nicely in a month or two. As you'll see when you read it, there's no real hurry to most things in life - so why rush to the end of a book that will give you lots to think about on nearly every page.

And please forgive me my absence - but I'm back now. I'd love to read your comments on this blog once in a while. There are lots of you that read it, at last count about 200 readers, but few comments. Feel free to disagree too.

Wishing you a lovely respite from whatever you have overdone lately!