Gratitude Journal 2020 #1

Welcome to Gratitude Journal 2020. It may not have seemed like it, especially toward the end as I fell off from writing the journal on a regular basis, but I really liked doing this last year. I honestly do believe it made me happier. (Which was one of my main purposes for doing a gratitude journal.) And so, I am going to do another one for 2020. I am going to keep the goal at 100 items (called entries in 2019) for the year. I am going to keep the focus on the smaller, everyday things, but if something big happens, I am going to let myself be publically grateful for the big things. I try not to do too much repeating during the year (I had three repeats last year – my knee brace, heating pads, and lazy days), but I might repeat somethings from last year this year, because I am still grateful for them.

Gratitude Item #1 – Cooperative Weather
I decided to take the dogs on a walk Saturday morning. The plan was for it to be a rather short walk. But we made it as far as I was planning to go, and the dogs still really wanted to GO. The weather was cooperating, which is rare in early January, so we just kept going. We ended up taking a walk of a little over 10,000 steps, about 90 minutes long. And never once did it rain on us. There were even patches of blue sky overhead.
It is not that I cannot take the dogs on a walk in bad weather, but I prefer not to. And if I am going to do that, the dogs and I all need to be dressed for it, which we were not yesterday. It was actually a really nice, if slightly unplanned, way to start the day.

Gratitude Item #2 – Accountability Group
I am part of an Accountability Group that meets twice a month. Besides the fact that some very good friends are in this group with me, making it a great way to see them, I love the idea of looking at where my life is at the moment and creating goals. I then speak those goals out loud for other people to hear. And guess what? They then ask me about those goals the next time we meet. That group is one of the main reasons I managed to stick with the Gratitude Journal last year. (I had other goals that I did not meet, but I managed at least that one.)
One of the hard things about right now is that it is so quiet at work, I have a lot of creative energy. I got things done and have ideas about all sorts of other things I want to do. But I cannot honestly say I will continue to have the energy to do them once students and faculty are back on campus tomorrow. I want to set really lofty goals, but I also want to be honest with myself and not set myself up to fail. Instead, I set one major goal for right now, a goal that I hope will actually help keep my stress levels down and creative energy up.
My goal? Actually take my lunch break. We will see how I do.