Here’s what I’ve learned in the first 7 days of November:
I have taken on too much, and though I’m so much better at staying on task and using my time, some days, time evaporates like water on concrete in Arizona summers.
It’s 5:35 p.m. as I write this, and in an hour I need to be on the road to west Omaha to attend a class on Judaism that will take up the rest of my evening. I have a list of tasks I didn’t come close to finishing today, tasks that really have to be finished by tomorrow night.
As frustrated as I feel near the end of the Mondayiest of Mondays, I’m trying to remember these things: laughing with my friends at lunch. My friend Mr. Reimer hanging out with my 3rd hour class while I tended to journalism business with Mr. Stueve–I didn’t ask Reimer to do this; he must have noticed I wasn’t in my room and commenced teaching my gaggle of writers. I’m remembering how much I adore my newspaper staff, and really all my classes. I’m feeling the warmth from my heater, after forgetting to turn it on and coming home to a 67 degree apartment. I’m sporting a new fleece hoodie, and my belly is full from a dinner of roasted chicken, green beans, and naan.
This November, I might not be posting daily the things for which I am grateful, but I’m trying to be acutely aware of how lucky I am. I send up periodic prayers of gratitude for all the little things in my life, where the whole is so much greater than the sum of its parts.
You should try it.
