In mid-August, sixty days prior to my 60th birthday I started a writing exercise I called “60 Days of Gratitude“. Ten years ago I wrote a thought piece entitled “Half Century Mark“. I wanted to do something similar to mark the next decade, and using a writing exercise focussed on gratitude seemed an appropriate approach.
Now that I’m done I decided to capture some of what I learned in the process.
Today concludes my sixty days of gratitude writing exercise.
Today is my 60th birthday.
I’m grateful to be here.
I’ll indulge with a repeat on my sixty days of gratitude.
Because she deserves it. And more.
As I close in on the end of my sixty days of gratitude, one of the themes that’s become apparent is that many of the items I’ve identified are things we often take for granted.
I don’t want to take you for granted.
Being both retired and self-employed makes for a very interesting lifestyle.
The keyword is “flexibility”, which is both good news and bad.
“Oma & Opa” is Dutch for grandmother and grandfather. Pictured are my mother’s parents with us on their visit circa 1964.
I never met my father’s parents. They were long gone before I arrived.
In looking back, I miss having never met them, and conversely, I’m very grateful I got to spend time with my mother’s parents.
It wouldn’t be my 60 days of gratitude if I didn’t include coffee. And vodka. And coffee-flavored vodka. And coffee-flavored rum, while I’m at it. And Starbucks, of course.
You get the idea. I’m grateful for coffee, with and without alcohol, and preferably from Starbucks.
But when I think about it, it’s really gratitude for something much, much larger: choice.
I’ve always been a reader. Some of my earliest memories include books of one sort or another. I’m sure I have my mother to thank for that.
I recall Little Golden Books on a bookshelf when I was perhaps five years old. Dick and Jane were part of my kindergarten or first grade curricula. I was an avid reader and collector of Tom Swift Jr. (my first science fiction), as well as The Hardy Boys.
But it wasn’t until high school that things really took off.
Sometimes it’s something very simple and yet out of the ordinary that I stumble into and suddenly feel some weird level of gratitude for.
Like my mother’s car.
While on an out of town trip, I chipped a tooth.
More specifically, a veneer on one of my front teeth broke in half. One half stayed in place, the other not so much. I wasn’t even doing anything particularly horrid at the time – using my teeth to start a tear in a plastic bag.
And of course this all happens while out of town.