Appreciating What I Have...

I am not really feeling it this week.  I haven’t felt great and then the weather was all weird yesterday.  This always leaves me feeling tired, out of sorts and low energy.  I woke up this morning and just didn’t want to do the day, like at all.  And I could think of nothing that I wanted to say...

So I sat here thinking, “what the fuck do I have to say today?  What do I need to hear?”

And I realized that I needed to take a moment to appreciate what I have.  I woke up today with the lack.  I felt it.  I could just feel the day grating on me and it wasn’t even day light yet.  I went to meditation with the hope it would change my mood, but alas it did not.  Just 30 minutes of sitting with a mind that would not be still or quiet...and a very strong desire to just sink back into bed and say “fuck it” to the day.

But I have routines for a reason and they are important.  And so I just moved onto the next thing on my daily list:  writing.  So here I am writing.  Not going to be a stellar piece today because my heart isn’t really in it.  I am tired and feeling unmotivated.  But I am going to go through the motions anyway because I know that is how I get from how I feel now to how I will feel later today when I have not abandoned myself and goals, and have pushed through the malaise I woke up with today.

I do a gratitude list every morning.  I get coffee, go to meditation then I write 12 things I am grateful for...and today I realized that perhaps, I am grateful for things but I am not really appreciating them.  Because here I am in my lovely home, in a great town, all my bills paid, nice clothes to wear, in relative good shape and health, surrounded by love and adoration (cats mostly and a very loyal dog, and well my mom and friends) and I wasn’t feeling the appreciation for the life I have.  I was down, feeling like “what the fuck is even the point?”

But I have learned that I don’t have to go with my first thought, or feeling.  I can allow each to have space for expression and then I can allow other thoughts and feelings to come into existence.  And this morning, appreciation was what came after all the tired, shiftlessness was swirling in my  head.  I do not have to be at a job I hate this morning.  My day is pretty much my own.  I have heat and AC for whatever the day may bring.  I leave in less than a week for a kick ass trip with my mom.  My kids are doing ok and so are my pets.  I have friends that love me and I actually like and love the same. I have time in my day for exercise, meditation, a walk, the gym, writing, reading and taking care of myself: body, mind and spirit.

I have a good life that is replete with options, opportunities and grace.  Is everything exactly the way I want it? No.  But I am blessed and I am here, and I am grateful.  I appreciate that I have this life right here, right now.  I will not cheapen my experience of my life by thinking it should be different, altered, better.  I have a good life.  I have good health.  I am loved and love.  And if it never gets any better than this, I am quite lucky!

Sometimes I just need the right amount of discontent to bring me enough dissatisfaction that I have to really look at what I am doing and why.  I am lucky to be here, I am lucky to live the life I have and the fact that I don’t appreciate all I have been given and worked for, is a place to do some more work.  I am going to do my best today to appreciate all that I have and let the stuff that isn’t here, that I do not have to feel right.  I don’t have it because it isn’t time, or it isn’t the place or I don’t need it.  In this moment, I am so good, I have really never had it so good!

So I am going to return my mind to this place every single time I begin to drift off to that place where I do not feel the appreciation for the life I have.  And if I get stuck, I am going to get outside and move my body and allow the beauty of the place I live to move me forward.

Again, still...