Category Archives: Think About It

Scenes From a Gratitude Journal

Think About It

Earlier, I had some highfalutin notion that I’d dash out some brilliance this morning when I was fresh as a daisy. But here it is 5:30pm and I’m about as fresh as a container of yogurt nearing its expiration date. So rather than pull out any more hair (which is already more follicly challenged than it appears), I decided to share some of the items from my daily gratitude journal.

This isn’t me. My gratitude journal isn’t this interesting.

Yeah, that’s right. I keep a daily gratitude journal. Actually, it’s more of a list. I’ve been doing it for nearly two months now and I gotta tell ya, it’s pretty cool. I’ve tried to keep one of these blasted things many times before. But this time it’s sticking. I think because the past six months have forced me to reframe nearly every scene and situation that comes my way so as not to surrender to the impulse to permanently burrow in one of my cats’ heated beds and abandon all efforts at personal hygiene.

Now, I can admit that this whole keeping of a list may be effective in part due to my driving perfectionism that refuses to die. My brain sees seeking gratitude in challenging situations as an assignment for which I strive to get a gold star and a big A+. For example, it’s not uncommon for dialogue like this to take place in my head:

Me: That guy is a first-rate asshole.

Me: Well, can you find something good about him that you could put in your gratitude journal later?

Me: If I kicked him hard in the kneecaps, I’d be grateful to watch him crumble to the ground.

Me: But he’s the president.

Me: I don’t know why I have to keep saying this, but he’s not MY president...

Okay. That’s clearly not the best example. That would be more like a sad face sticker and a big C-. But, as my friend Nolan says, some days a C- is good enough. Frankly, that’s a really good lesson too. All of that aside, I feel I’m doing something proactive by keeping this journal. Even if I have to resist writing the stuff that irritates me to no end.

So without further ado, here are eighteen of the hundreds of items that have made the cut in the past two months. I hope you enjoy.

  1. The musical score from the movie The Color Purple
  2. Trees – everything about them (even when they spit sticky stuff on my car)
  3. Bob’s Burgers (one of the greatest cartoons ever)
  4. Bananas with chocolate sauce
  5. The way some flowers reseed and then show up again next year
  6. Trader Joe’s rice pilaf (I’m willing to pretend I’m not a pescetarian to eat this EVERY week)
  7. My little blue Honda Fit (whose name is Fred)
  8. Iridescence (especially in parking lot oil puddles)
  9. Libraries
  10. George Benson on guitar
  11. Learning new words (crabwise is one of my personal favorites)
  12. Fluoride
  13. That first swift and sweeping movement on my bike as I enter the street from my driveway
  14. The Bomb Burrito from Christine’s Cuisine in Ferndale
  15. The versatility of eggs (they’re incredible and edible)
  16. All of the opportunities I’ve been given (and there have been many)
  17. Kind people
  18. My friends who support my writing (thanks, y’all)

Gratitude rocks. And since I’ve got nothing else to blather on about, I’ll leave you with that.

See ya next week.

I Don’t Need Anger Management

rebel daisy, Think About It

I just need people to stop pissing me off.

This saying has particular appeal to me because I’ve often been accused of being an angry person. I’m not going to deny it. I HAVE struggled with anger. But seriously, who hasn’t? It’s not like I’ve intentionally hurt anyone or set anything important on fire. So YOU’RE the one with the problem.

Ah, but I deflect.

Seriously though, I have had to work through some anger issues. Over the past two decades, I’ve done this predominantly through therapy, yoga, meditation, and yes, alcohol. The first three have been noticeably more effective than the fourth.

It should be noted that I’m by no means an angry drunk. In fact, I was always more in the “we should totally go to Canada/climb that cell tower/steal that grocery cart” camp. (A wink and nod to my former fellow campers. And sincerest apologies to those who were my keepers during such inspired moments.)

Still, and this may surprise you, there were occasions when alcohol backfired. Case in point – one afternoon, following a series of poor decisions, I was at a biker bar in Southern Florida, nearly blackout drunk and angrily attempting to start something with a woman with whom I had no business attempting to be starting something. I’ll spare you the details because 1) war stories are boring and 2) I don’t remember the details. I blacked out shortly after that defining moment. But when I came to later, there were three distinct claw marks across my back. I’m certain they were human.

And though I have no memory of the incident, I’m even more certain they were motivated by rage.

This story may be unsettling to those of you who have turned to me for guidance as a yoga teacher or a life coach. To you I say most sincerely, sorry but suck it up. And that’s not me being angry. It’s me being honest. And straight-up human. I don’t drink like that any more. But twenty years ago, “push it down with the brown” sure seemed like an easy way to manage my anger. Things are clearly not as they always seem.

Rebel Daisy demonstrates righteous indignation.

Don’t worry. I’m not going to dole out some heart-warming story that relays to you the vast and sundry methods I employed to turn my life around and overcome anger. Despite the yoga, therapy, and meditation, I haven’t overcome anger. Frankly, it’s not even a goal. While to some extent I feel that anger is my birthright as a redhead (albeit a greying redhead), I don’t desire to rid myself of it because I also recognize where anger has helped me. My therapist many years ago suggested I reframe anger as “righteous indignation.” I liked that suggestion. And yeah, sure. For the first few years as I worked to grasp that concept, I was merely dressing up my anger in a righteously indignant costume and parading it around like a rabid three-legged Chihuahua in a black-sequined cape.

These days though, I am better able to recognize that line between righteous indignation motivating me to take positive action, and anger threatening to take me down. Far more often than not, I have a handle on it. And that’s saying a lot, given that THESE DAYS, things are… challenging. I’ll spare you the details on that one too, since we’re ALL living it.

Yes, yoga and meditation have gone a long way in teaching me skills to manage my anger. I no longer feel the need to be free of it though. When approached mindfully and with awareness, it serves a purpose. For me, it can be a valuable tool.

It would be nice though if certain people would at least stop trying to piss me off so much…

I Licked It, So It’s Mine

Think About It

Seems like a pretty solid rule. Especially these days.

But this isn’t a post about these days. Oh no. It’s not about the pandemic. And it’s not about last night when the so-called president of the United States freely and shamelessly used a racial slur on live national television; an action that surely endears him all the more to his base. Nope. None of that malarkey today. Not having ANY of it.

It would be far more amusing to talk about the five foul-mouthed grey parrots in a British wildlife park who taught one another to swear and then had a jolly good laugh about it. The naughty British avians had to be separated, but it wasn’t because anybody complained. In fact, the CEO of the park claimed quite the opposite. “When a parrot tells you to fuck off, it amuses people very highly,” he said. “It’s brought a big smile to a really hard year.” Even so, they felt that the birds might be a bad influence on the children visitors.

So with that sloppy segue in place, what I’d really like to talk about is children. More specifically, about being a child. A kid. Do you miss being a kid? It sure seems it was a simpler world when I could break into a wild run with no objection from my knees or hips; when my biggest complaint was that I was bored; when I could have illustrious “conversations” with otherworldly creatures deep beneath the sewer grate; when the rules were as simple as “I licked it, so it’s mine.”

Here’s the thing though. Humans have a legendary capacity to romanticize the past.

This drawing is exhibit #1 as to why I didn’t go into art professionally.

Sure, when I was a kid, I could spend hours drawing cartoon characters and could easily hop around the floor on my knees. Neither skill would prove to be terribly helpful as an adult. The former because it led me to foolishly believe I could someday make a living as a cartoonist and the latter because, well, no one I know really needs to be able to hop around on their knees. But I’m not gonna lie – I enjoyed them both. As such, it’s SO easy to remember childhood as all sugar cubes and Puff the Magic Dragon. Yes, for the more astute and experimentally-minded readers, those are drug references. Because there are times when being a kid feels as magical as being on hallucinogens.

But peel back the glittery and shiny epidermal layers and you’ll reveal the seedier underbelly of being a kid.

Of course, I can’t speak for your childhood. I can only speak for mine. And I was very lucky to grow up in a home environment where I felt loved, valued, and safe. Even so, I found navigating the world outside my home terrifying. I was socially awkward, which is why I found such camaraderie among the imaginary sewer grate community. And I was frequently bullied – one time to the point of walking to school for two years rather than cower in fear from the mean girls on the bus who hated me for reasons I never understood.

I guess I just didn’t have the right look. The other girls in my neighborhood all seemed to have skin that tanned in the summer months and long straight blond hair that “feathered” – an enviable feature in the 1970s. With my pale and freckled skin, buck teeth, and curly red hair that left me sporting an Irish Afro from April through October, I bore an uncanny resemblance to Napolean Dynamite. At least, that’s how I saw myself. Of course, that character didn’t exist in the 1970s. But you get the point.

That’s why I cringe when folks wax poetic about the good old days; about how things were so much easier back when; about making things “great again.” Because the reality is, if we’re willing to look honestly at our past, nothing has ever been great for any extended amount of time. And certainly not great for EVERYONE. Even in those periods of your life when things were better, they probably weren’t as great as you remember. And you can bet that someone else was likely having a hell of a time. It’s important to remember that any given time, your worst day may look like someone else’s best day.

So each time I get nostalgic for the halcyon days of my youth, I smile. Because yeah, there were some good times. But there were some really bad times too. THAT’S HOW LIFE WORKS. And believing in a return to a fictional past gilded in gold and perpetually in the rays of an eternal sun is the domain of a madman and nothing but pure folly.

I’d prefer to stay in the moment, thanks.