Gratitude Journal #12

Apparently, you can train your brain to be happier by keeping a gratitude journal, so I am giving it a go. My goal is post about 100 things I am grateful for over the course of the year. (This should average out to just a little over 2/week.) However, I am going to try and stay away from the standard family/friends/pets. Please know I absolutely am grateful for my family, friends, and pets. I would not have made it through the past couple of year without each of them. But if I am trying to train myself to be happier, then I want to start recognizing the smaller things in life that I am grateful for.

Some weeks, what I am grateful for just jumps out at me. Those posts are easy to write and just flow from my fingers. Other weeks, like this week, I have to search harder to find what I am grateful for. And it is not that I am not grateful, it is that the week has been difficult. I am not as sick as I was, but I am still not better, and it is dragging at me mentally.
But the easy weeks are not the reason I am doing this. I am doing this for these hard weeks. Right, the whole idea of trying to train yourself to be happier, just like training yourself to do anything, means you have to still do it when it is hard. It will not work if you only do something when it is easy to do.
And since it is one of those hard weeks, it is a week that I am making myself be grateful for three things, to make sure I reach my 100 by the end of the year.

Gratitude entry #24 – My Non-Standard Work Schedule
About a year and a half ago, my Chair let me change my work schedule so that I work 9 hours Monday-Wednesday, 8 hours on Thursdays, and only 5 hours on Fridays. I still get my 40 hours for the week, but since I start work at 7a, it means that on Fridays, I am out at noon, giving me that extra half day for every weekend. And that extra half day has made a huge difference in my life, especially last year when I was traveling at least one day every weekend, and sometimes both days.
And it makes sense that I notice Friday. Even the thought when I first made the change was that I would not really notice the extra hour on the days I work 9 hours, but that I would notice the three hours combined on Friday. But what is odd, is that I also really notice, and on some level, am even more grateful for, my one 8 hour workday each week.
Fridays, I get off work and immediately go into the weekend shopping chore routine. But Thursdays, Thursdays it actually feels like I am cutting out of work early when I leave at 4p instead of 5p. That one hour difference is an hour I get. It is not preplanned. And since it only happens one day a week, it really feels like I am getting off work and getting home one hour early every time. It seems odd to say I do not really notice working one longer three days a week, but I very much notice working one hour “less” on one day. But I do. And since today is Thursday, it does just put me in a better mood all day.

Gratitude entry #25 – Heating Pads with Auto Shut-Off
For the most part, I am not still sick, except that I kind of am. I still have a cough. And with all the coughing, I have pulled some muscles in my neck. Tuesday night it was especially bad. My neck hurt, so my shoulders hurt, so my back hurt, etc. So on Tuesday night, I took one of our lovely soft heating pads and put it on my contoured pillow exactly where it would hit my neck. I was able to set it on the highest setting and then fall asleep, with no concerns about burning myself or starting a fire, or anything like that, because the heating pad has an auto shut-off function. And so I woke up Wednesday morning in considerably less pain than I was in when I fell asleep.

Gratitude entry #26 – It is NOT Snowing
This may feel like a cheap entry, but it is something I am seriously grateful for this week. Seattle had one of it’s worst winters this year, setting records for snowfall in the month of February and for the winter overall. It warmed up a bit, and then it cooled back down, and it is most definitely raining. But I am friends with people all across the country. I see their posts on Facebook and on message boards. Many of them have gotten more snow this week. They are back to freezing temperatures, school closures, snow on the ground.
Now, the one time we ever got snowed in when I was growing up in Montana, it was the first weekend in May, so I do not feel like I can claim that April is too late in the year for this kind of weather. But, I am incredibly glad that that storm front is not hitting the Pacific Northwest. Yes, it is gray and rainy here, but honestly, we had way more than our usual share of clear, sunny days this winter, so I can take the rain and the gray. And I will certainly take the rain in April over snow any day.