Here we are, 30 days into daily blogging, and I don’t feel that I’ve posted too much of substance. But that’s okay. I’ve reopened the creative outlet, and perhaps the posts can keep flowing. I still have lots of photos and stories I’ve been wanting to post.
I’ve realized1 that one of the things this blog does for me is to give me motivation to take stock of my thoughts and ideas. (And my photos, actually.) I’ve also realized that I do a lot of taking stock, in general, in reminding myself to appreciate all the wonderful people and things in my life. (And by things, I don’t necessarily mean objects, though I suppose I have things that I am fond of. Books and artwork come to mind, as well as other odds and ends I’ve collected.)
A few months ago (or possibly something like a year ago?), I started using a meditation app to deal with my stress. My favorite guided meditation is a nightly gratitude session, which I often do once I’ve gone to bed. It involves thinking back over the day, whether it was a good day or a bad one, and focusing on the good things, big and small. Because it’s just for me, there’s no pressure to come up with anything new or entertaining, so I am often grateful for the same general list. But that’s okay.
I settled on the post title of “taking stock” earlier in the day, without quite having decided exactly what direction I was going with it. There’s been a fair amount of taking stock of actual things in my life lately as well–as in actual inventories of objects. The various political postcard/letter projects have me doing a lot of counting and organizing of cards and stamps and pens. My work has me inventorying examples once more, though these aren’t so much physical. And at home we’ve been trying to stock up on food and home staples in preparation for potential pandemic-related issues again. (The US is definitely seeing alarming trends.)
This year has definitely seen some challenging times–for my family, for this country, and the whole world. There has been a lot of stress as well as sorrow. (I’ve taken stock of quite a few new gray hairs in the last few months.) But all of this taking stock makes me appreciate the bounty of good fortune that I’ve had, in spite of it all.
1And by “realized,” I suppose I mean, “realized again.” Because the very tagline of my blog is “collecting my thoughts, and other things.” So I guess that’s what I had in mind when I started this blog 14 years ago.
collecting tokens 