I think I said before I'm trying to get through the entire Simple Abundance book this year. I've had the thing for five years now and never got through the whole thing once. The first couple years, I would read it daily for spells and then put it down for months. I don't think I even touched it at all in 2001 and started reading a page here and there at the end of last year. There are some months (November comes to mind) that I have never, ever read at all. It's sadly appropriate that I haven't been able to manage reading for a mere five minutes or less out of this book each day. So this is the year.

I can't say I'm doing well, because I've read all of January something like three times. I think I managed to get through February a couple times too and maybe even March. So reading daily until the 17th of the month is not exactly a feat worthy of mention, but it is a good start. I even started marking the pages I read with the year, just to document what I've read. Maybe next year, if I fail at this again, I can start up where I left off this year. It seems like a good idea now. We'll see how that pans out as the months pass.

I knew the Gratitude Journal assignment was coming. I remember it being somewhere in mid-January from the other times, and I was beginning to dread it. I never had much luck with the gratitude journal. I don't know if it's because I'm an ingrate, it's not for me, or I just don't get it. The author of Simple Abundance, Sarah Ban Breathnach, says that the gratitude journal is required, and even though I feel like I'm in school again, I decided I'll try. One more time. If I still find myself wanting to stomp my gratitude journal into the floorboards, I will do what I never did in school and skip the assignment. I can't believe that I'll get nothing at all from the book just because I can't find a little gratitude.

It's not that I'm not thankful. I do recognize the good things in my life. I'm actually much better at that than I used to be. I know it probably seems like I'm a complete pessimistic whiner, but that's because I believe there is a direct link from the "writing center" in my brain to the "most depressing thoughts" center. Even our therapist described me as a generally happy person, and people complement me on my smile all the time. There are just certain aspects of my life that suck and cause me stress. Unfortunately, those areas are pretty important to me, so they get a lot of time dedicated to them. It is my natural tendency to want to fix or find the answer to everything too. Of course, I have to analyze things into the ground before I ever bring myself to make a decision though, so you can see why I rarely get anywhere with anything. Kind of like this paragraph.

Trying to get back to the point (if I had one to begin with), I dug out the old gratitude journal. It was buried under mountains of other books, journals, magazines, papers, and a couple of cassettes that I don't even remember having. The last entry was made in December 2000, saying I didn't feel very grateful, which is understandable because Booie had been sick for a month and went way downhill from there. There weren't more than ten pages filled in that thing, and I started it in '97. I noticed many of the same things listed day after day, and some of the things were laughable like, "John and I haven't been fighting much at all and are better able to resolve our conflicts," written in 1999 and, "I am more in control, more happy, more focused, and getting things organized and clean," from 1998. Ha! I would have had to live in a cave with bears to have where I am now be an improvement. Wait, I think I do live in a cave with bears. Nevermind.

Even though I had little success in the past, I'm willing to try again. Never let it be said I'm not a glutton for punishment. I did look back through the old gratitudes to see what I liked and didn't like to try and find a format that might work for me. As usual, I think a straight-ahead list will work best. I never really did that before, always trying to get too fancy, cute, or ridiculously deep. So far, things have been short and simple. Maybe I was just making too much of this all along. It wouldn't be the first time.

I won't be doing any lists here either. That always annoyed the hell out of me for some reason. I was particularly peeved when people started listing five things they were grateful for on mailing lists. I always felt that if you had to advertise your gratitude like that, you had a few things to learn, but then I'm the one who can't seem to keep a stupid gratitude journal. Maybe this is the year though.

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