Friday, December 25, 2015

Thankful project, instead of a blog post...

I have started, and deleted, so many blog posts in the last two months.  Endless streams of words that I type, read, and delete.  Over an over again, I write a bunch of stuff, and then chuck it into the trash because it’s just too negative to post.

Thanksgiving and Christmas have been exceptionally hard, for the regular reasons, but also for the indescribable reasons.  I can’t say why I am feeling so ungrateful, but I am.  I can’t say why (exactly) I have so little patience, to little empathy, and so little optimism.  But I do.

But, again, this is not who I (think) am.  I am the person who seeks to right the wrongs, to fight the good fight, and to make the world a better place.  But. But.

So, with that being said, I’m going to be doing a side project for the next month, and if it catches, keep doing it for a while.  My project is this:  force myself to be grateful for one thing each day, and publically post that.  I can’t say that they will all be gloriously transcendent, or that even all of them will make sense.  But I’m going to force myself to focus, at least once each day, to be grateful for one thing.

I’m going to take a picture of that one thing, or something that represents that thing, and then cross post it to FB, Instagram (@jasonstrzalkowski) and Twitter (@fossileyes).

If you want to comment, comment.  If you want to like, like.  If you want to ignore, ignore.  But, I’m hoping that my empathy pool, my utter belief in the goodness of humanity, and my connection to the larger community out there will be redrawn, repaired, and renewed.  If not that, as it’s a little high-minded, at least I’ll have a project, and it will be amusing.

With that, my next post will be my first thankful moment.  If you have a snazzy name for these things, let me know.  I’m running short of snaz right now.


Hope all is well with all of you, and that you had a great Christmas surrounded by those who love and care for you.