Thankfully, November

I took that! On a run! Fall :) :) 

My bff Elisa Jordan and I did something this year: we decided to name an "intention" for every month, for the simple fact that we wanted to be more intentional about our lives. We gave up meat and dairy and all sorts of I don't even remember what in the beginning of the year. And then we had to start getting creative because we were running out of things to simply give up, and so we starting coming up with things "European August" and "Joyous June" and we had different intentions for different reasons and we kind of forgot we were making intentions and just kept living and fitting our intentions into our lives or our lives into our intentions in whatever ways made sense.

I'm sitting on my bedroom floor at the moment, and I was sulking a little because I'm prone to sulking. And I found my journal from last year and the very beginning of the intention-setting and I thought to myself, "Oh my goodness! It's November 2nd and I have no intention!!"

Elisa's intention this month is No-Netflix November. I think that's very noble.

My intention, decided in the past 10 minutes, is Thankfulness (let me know if you can think of anything that's alliterative with November, that's also a synonym for thankfulness).

I know this is not a new idea, this one I'm about to present, which is naming one thing that I'm thankful for every day in November. I was originally thinking I'd only say the thing aloud to myself every morning, but there is not enough intention in that and this is Intentional, No-Plan 2013 (if you weren't already aware, my New Year's resolution was to make no plans for this year. I'm driving my parents crazy).

So, I must share my thankfulness with the interwebs, naturally. EVERY DAY. THIS MONTH.

Now I have two days to make up for, so here we go:


November 1st (yesterday):

Yesterday (and still!), I was thankful for Handel's Messiah. Believe what you want, but that is some inspired stuff right there. And the alto solos are LAME. No high notes. But I love them because they're actually not lame at all and I like to sing them. Yesterday I found joy singing alto solos from the Messiah. Who knew?


November 2nd:

Today I am thankful for my obsession with chronicling my own life. It is so easy to forget the reasons to be thankful, I think, when life is just a bombardment of stimuli and a race to get through to the next day. But when I read things that I wrote months ago, I remember what there is to be thankful for. And I remember I am not, nor have I ever been hopeless or unloved or entirely dejected or rejected. I am thankful, because I can see the differences between me now and me last year. I am thankful because stagnation is not a thing, and I would think it was a thing if I didn't have these reminders that I have done some of the things I set out to do a year ago, and that I am better for it. And am I thankful because sometimes, I'm actually pretty smart. Sometimes my own words have more meaning now than they did when I wrote them. May I continue to chronicle, and continue to meet myself again when I look back on the things I thought forgotten.