Post-Work Sunset

After a long day of work, walking outside to see something beautiful is a wonderful thing. It reminds me that the universe we live in is incredible and that I should never cease to be amazed. That brief moment as I walked to my car was all it took to put a smile on my face and lift some weight off my shoulders. There are things to worry about and there are things not to worry about. Allowing myself to appreciate such a remarkable natural phenomenon allowed me to reframe my perspective and, if only for a moment, realize everything is going to be OK and that I'm doing just fine.

Thank you, sunset, for reminding me that everyday life is filled with beauty and that all it takes is a step back to see it.

Heads up on the upcoming super blue blood moon.

Jasmine Green Tea

I am grateful for the jasmine green tea we just got. It's been about two weeks since I've had any coffee (by far, the longest I've gone since I started drinking it in 2013, i.e. when I started grad school) and hot, soothing tea has been a saving grace. Honestly, I'm surprised I can go a full day with nothing more than a green tea, but hey—the human body and mind is amazing.

Thank you, tea, for bringing warmth and comfort into my body and giving me just a little caffeine. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to step away from something that I've had mixed feelings about for a while now (the headaches, the sluggishness, the ever-increasing tolerance, the dependence). Here's to just a little more clarity and stability. Thank you.

By the way, welcome back.

Garbage Raccoons

(photo as it appears on: http://corbettbarr.com/2009/)

I am grateful for the raccoons that broke into the garbage bags full of recycling that I had left on the porch. Really, what I should have been doing was driving the recycling out to the designated blue stations on a weekly basis, but instead I let it accumulate and began storing it with the intention of taking one big trip someday. Well, not only did these raccoons call me out on my bad habit, but they instilled in me the motivation to actually load up the recycling and take it where it needed to go.

So thank you, raccoons, for encouraging me to be more responsible with my chores. It's hard to be mad at you when I enabled the problem to begin with.

Weekend Staycation

I am grateful for another weekend staycation! We're off to the Airstream to soak up the vibes of our now-officially-ours Tiny Home. We got the title and a brand-spanking-new license plate.

Here we go.

Thought Experiments

I am grateful for the mind's ability to play with perspective to gain a different understanding of a situation. I am full of biases. Everyone is and often we are not even aware of them. For example, let's say I'm hypothetically (wink wink) watching a political debate between two candidates. Further, let's say that while I'm ultimately undecided, I still favor one over the other. During the course of responses and rebuttals, I find myself agreeing with most things one candidate says while I think most things that the other says are ridiculous. It's not even solely what the person says, but somehow what the person is. Something about the other person is unsettling, disingenuous, and unnatural.

This is about when I became aware of my bias. So I decided to try an experiment. Instead of seeing one person as my favored candidate and the other as questionable, I mentally flipped my conception of them. This turned my bias on its head and I suddenly began evaluating the candidates statements from a radically different point of view. How interesting! This simple thought experiment was garnering new insight despite nothing substantive changing about what was being said.

What else have my biases been filtering and altering on my behalf? How often have I misinterpreted a situation because I was unable or unwilling to see it from a perspective other than my own? Well, I have a feeling that like gratitude this is a skill that can be practiced. I have a feeling it can be and that becoming aware of this possibility is the first step. Now it's simply a matter of being willing to practice it. Thank you for the daily opportunities I am given to understand the world around me a little more.

Good Weekend

I am grateful for the wonderful weekend my wife and I had. As already mentioned, it started off with some great finds at Goodwill. Then we officially spent out first night in our Tiny Home! It was super cool and I absolutely loved it. We're still a few months from being ready to settle in, but we're hoping to spend weekends in there to get a good feel for it and any modifications/repairs we need to make. It was totally like taking a mini vacation.

On Saturday, we hiked out to my wife's parents' house to visit their newfound kittens. A stray had taken shelter by their shed and gave birth to a litter of five. Two remain and we got to play with the little fuzzballs.

We had breakfast with a friend and her little boy the next morning. We made waffles and parfaits, which were delicious. They also got to check out or Tiny Home for the first time.

A family friend also came out to the Tiny Home to take a look at our power needs (he's an electrical engineer) and said it would be a snap to get it all set up! Super exciting. To repay his efforts, we had him and my wife's grandma over for a delicious dinner that we made.

I am grateful for the time we got to spend with friends and family—the people who help us in more ways than we can count—and with our future home. This weekend was a nice blend of productivity and relaxation. I've learned from experience that too much of either can make for a disappointing weekend, but this was just perfect. So thank you. I'll see you next week.

Goodwill Finds

(photo as it appears on: http://nemaloknig.info/read-267806/?page=15)


I am grateful for today's finds at Goodwill. Right off the bat I found an unopened, fully-functional speedometer for my bike. I've been pushing myself to go harder and faster and I'm curious to see how fast I'm actually going (and to keep track of it to be sure I'm improving). It'll also be nice to see how far I bike everyday.

After that, I happened upon the eye-opening book on the universe and astrophysics that I had originally acquainted myself with in high school via my local library: Black Holes and Times Warps: Einstein's Outrageous Legacy by Kip S. Thorne. I'm super pumped to read this again. (By the way, this book was published in 1994 and in it Kip describes the theory of gravitational waves and models of what they would look like should they actually exist. Lo and behold, they were discovered this year and the models match exactly! Amazing brains we have on this planet...) Kip was also a consultant for the movie Interstellar to verify that the physics in the movie were correct.

Lastly, I found a book that (I hope) will be interesting and relevant to my wife. It melds ideas of identity and place and tries to understand the union of people and the cities they live in (at least, that's what I garnered from the back).

Here's to thrifty finds!