My Circus My Monkeys

I never thought I’d say this: but I am having a tough time writing this gratitude post today. Forgive me for being human, but ever since the start of 2019, besides the lovely four days traveling, life has been a roller coaster ride with something or other to deal with on a daily basis. Come to think of it, life has been a shaky ride for months now.

Last month I tried really hard and picked out the bright spots to list in my gratitude post.

This month, I am finding it a wee bit harder. I am allowing the state of my mind to cloud my thinking, and keep me from enjoying the moment, the good things in my life.

So just as well I host this gratitude circle blog hop, eh? A good reminder to practice what I preach.

Can you believe that I could actually make a long list of everything that went wrong? Only when I saw it growing did I stop to focus on everything that is going right. I’ve needed to give myself that kick in the posterior every other day. I have to confess it was cathartic to make the list.

Still, allow me to whine a bit, would you?

February brought quite a bit of unpleasantness.

Social media harassment

Who knew? I am an explorer when it comes to social media and pretty much post positive stuff.

You know how much I enjoy Instagram. On 1 Feb, someone started posting photos of me (stolen from my account) with nasty captions and comments and tags. I politely requested them to take it down, and they did. A few minutes later, the photos were back. I reached out to the community for help, because Instagram saw nothing wrong with it. They said it did not violate their community guidelines. I would show you screenshots of what the guy did, but I refuse to taint my blog with stuff like that. I thought it would fizzle off, but it wasn’t to be. The guy created new accounts to harass me. He got his friends to post my photos with even nastier and hurtful captions and comments and via DM. Oh, the mental torture I went through! Of course, I told myself that when one uses social media, these are possibilities, but what hurt was not having a support system to deal with it. Sadly, only a handful of people stepped forward offering to help. Well, such is life.

Long story short, the “issue”, as we delicately refer to it, has been resolved and I pray it stays that way.

All I can say is, beware on social media. There are all sorts of people out there. Keep checking your “new” followers.

My life does not revolve around social media and I don’t hang around there, anyway. It just hurts that the little time I spend there would result in this messy situation. I am reminding myself that I have a wonderful family, good friends offline, work I enjoy and a comfortable home. These are the times when the gratitude journal is a savior.

Health and other stuff

I am still recovering from my accident. The wounds are healing. I am grateful for that.

Feb also brought the intense shock of terrible blood test reports. Working hard to get back on target and get my life back together.

This month, we are also dealing with a series of cancelled flights, which means the run-around with getting refunds and rebooking at four times the cost of the original tickets, since commitments have to be kept. Grateful that while things are taking time, resolution is possible.

My computer continues to be cranky. My UPS died, setting me back a hefty expense for a new one.

My spectacle frames broke. It was under warranty (yeah, really!) and I handed it over to the shop to resolve. Should have been an easy thing to pick an identical frame, fit the lens and voila! Except, it wasn’t. They no longer had stock of that frame. And none in which my lenses fit. So it is now an issue their higher management has to provide a solution to, because progressive lenses are expensive—the same reason I didn’t make a spare. Also, I have to get an eye-check every year and the power changes. Sigh. Managing with reading glasses and cutting down screen time. And living with a constant headache.

As if all that wasn’t enough–you know how things expand to fill the space available—just about everything I did had some problem or other. You know—debit card being swiped twice while making a payment, flights getting cancelled, someone stealing my account on a website…the list goes on…argh!

Now is the time to back track to all that I am grateful for and

. . . here is my gratitude list

I am grateful for the customer service in these places that did their best to help me resolve most of it. True, there’ll always be problems in life… but so long as there’s a way to get back my peace of mind–I am fine with it. I’d only categorize it under life-lessons.

❤

I am grateful for phone calls with my BFFs who just seem to sense that I need to talk to them, vent, cuss a bit, and then feel remarkably better.

❤

I am grateful for the food I eat, and that I enjoy cooking and the local market around our place.

I am grateful to live in a comfortable home.

I am grateful for laughter and conversations with my son.

❤

I am grateful for Vanita, as always, for having my back, soothing me, scolding me, giving me great advice and always encouraging me. The girl has set daily alarms on her phone to send me off to bed at 10 and to tell me to go walk at 6 am. My Mom would be so proud of her!

❤

I am grateful I enjoy writing. Which is a good thing, what with six blogs. I am glad to say I’ve been working on posts for all of these for whatever it is worth. For now, glad for the enjoyable activity.

I am grateful I do work I enjoy, working from home without the stress of a commute. True that the commute from the kitchen to the living room has been a bit painful the past few weeks, but it comes under the “this too shall pass” category.

❤

I am grateful for a wonderful partner—we celebrated 22 years of togetherness this month.

Of course, the day before our wedding anniversary is the death anniversary of my Mom. It is nine years now. We miss her every day. I am grateful I have her in my heart and so many memories to cherish. Some days, that’s the only thing that keeps me going.

❤

Signing off this edition with the following fabulous quote that fills me with strength:

Nobody will protect you from your suffering.
You can’t cry it away or eat it away or starve it away or walk it away
or punch it away or even therapy it away.
It’s just there, and you have to survive it.
You have to endure it.
You have to live through it and love it and move on
and be better for it and run as far as you can
in the direction of your best and happiest dreams
across the bridge that was
built by your own desire to heal.

– Cheryl Strayed,
Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar

If you like motivating affirmations, check out my Wednesday Wisdom post titled Just for Today. It might be just what you wanted to read!

Join me for the February 2019 Gratitude Circle blog hop

Write your post, add the badge, then add your post URL to the linky below.
I wish you a wonderful month ahead!

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