Does This Gratitude Thing Still Work?

As I usually do, I posted my weekly Grace in Small Things post yesterday, and, as often happens, I received a comment questioning its efficacy:

Please don't take this as a cynical horrible question. I'm just going through a bad time right now and I'm curious — does this gratitude thing still work?

When I started Grace in Small Things back in the fall of 2008, I did so in response to a therapist who asked me to start a daily practice of writing down five things that didn't suck at the end of every day.

I was going through a really difficult time back then. I didn't write about it here, but I was on stress leave from work due to crippling anxiety and depression after a handful of years that involved an abusive work environment, my cervical cancer, the Palinode's broken back, and a then unacknowledged addiction to alcohol. I was just looking for a reason to bother continuing my existence in those days. Breakfast came with a side of suicidal ideation.

I knew that I'd never stick with any kind of gratitude journalling on my own, so I decided to make myself beholden to a community, and that is how I came to creating GiST. It worked. I committed to posting five things that were not terrible about my life every day for 365 days, and I did it, but it was hard. I'm the kind of person who normally thinks gratitude journals are bullshit. Some days I wanted to kick the whole community to the curb and just continue to devote myself to the cynicism I thought of as realism. Some days, listing things like buttered toast and pink kitten noses made me angry. It was really difficult to understand why these things mattered.

I kept at it, though, now that I had this community in hand, and I secretly hoped that at the end of my 365 days I would be able to declare that some great, tidal change had occurred within me. The final day came and went, though, and that great, tidal change was nowhere to be found, at least not then, and at least not in the dramatically transformative incarnation for which I was hoping. People asked me if I would write a post about my experiences with my first year with GiST, and I couldn't bring myself to do it. I didn't know what to say about it. Life was still too hard.

Truth be told, I felt a bit like a fraud. Life was still hard, and stuff was still not awesome.

It was better, though. In small, less perceptible ways, I was changing, but I didn't really notice it until a few months after that first year. I had pulled back from posting to GiST every day to doing it just once a week, but the habit of that thought process stuck with me, and not just as it regarded GiST. I was pausing to take note of things that didn't suck throughout my days as a natural reaction to negative thinking now.

And I wasn't making stuff up, either. I wasn't twisting crap into being less crappy in any false, unrealistic way. I was finding things that didn't suck that were actually there. They were always there, but in the past I had seen the negatives as outweighing the positives, whereas now I was seeing the positives as co-existent elements that, if not negating the negatives, were at least softening or even complementing them.



Life is still hard these days, and my faith in humanity is still often wafer thin, but I've come to realize that my almost solely cynical approach, the one I had for well over thirty years, was not actually the realism I thought it was. It was as much bullshit as the über-sweet Pollyanna crap I scoffed at.

Grace in Small Things has become an inoculation against bitterness rather than a fluffy grasp at sweetness. It has become a practice to restore balance to my negatively skewed outlook, and it works, at least for me.

Cynicism and bitterness only lead us to part of the story, not to the actual complexity, the fullness, of any situation. It's an easy part of the story to hang onto, because it asks the least of us. It only asks us to observe. It does not require our whole selves. It allows us to distance ourselves. We are not responsible. We are not involved. We are not that.

GiST did not single-handedly make me quit my devastating job or embrace sobriety or pursue a career in web design and consulting, but it definitely pushed me into a fuller, more complex kind of thinking about what the world has to offer and — this is the most important part, the part I wasn't expecting at all — what I have to offer the world. It is because of this shift in thinking, though, that my life has taken on enormous changes over the last three years.

I didn't realize how much I had to give and how much I wanted to give while I was concentrating on the wickedness of humanity and the cruelty of the physical universe, but there are flowers in the mud. I've seen that spot of vulnerability inside the bitter twist of a woman I used to work with. That angry kid hugs with a jarring ferocity. The garbage is a gold mine for the birds that sing through window in the late afternoon. That's not bullshit. That's just the way the universe works.

The world is more than dreck, and you do a disservice to yourself not to look at all of it, not just the shit and not just the fantastic stuff, but all of it. This universe we inhabit is this phantasmagorically complex scene rife with both villains and heroes, the horrible and the pleasing, and I want to see all of it. It's incredible, and I only get to witness it with this set of eyes of once. I want to actually see all of it, and not just allow myself to use the darker side of it to distance myself from the whole affair.

So, in answer to your question, yes, this gratitude thing works, at least for me. It didn't make things good, at least in the way I had initially hoped against hope it might three years ago, but it did bring things into more proper focus. It allows me to see the natural complexity of situations, which, on the one hand, makes reality an entirely slippery animal that is impossible to pin down, but, on the other hand, it makes very real the possibility in every circumstance.

Gratitude isn't about keeping it sweet. It's about appreciating the whole story. It's about allowing for possibility both within and without, and I am surprised as any cynic that this has turned out to be the case.

I Have No More Faith In Blogging Than I Do A Hammer. Blogging Is A Vehicle. It Is A How.

I've been going through my email inbox, and I mean really going through it back to emails I haven't cleared out since 2007, and, while I've been weeding through hundreds of bits of digital detritus, I've come across some really interesting bits and pieces of my life from the last handful of years.


I took this photo during a Pathfinders session at BlogHer '11 in San Diego.

One e-mail from June 2010 stands out for me, in particular, because it reminds me about why I'm here in the blogging arena and why I still love what I do. I've chosen to remove the author's name and tell-tale details to preserve confidentiality:

Okay, girl. I need to ask you. Where does your faith in blogging come from? I can't seem to muster it... I spend hours trolling online for amazing writing, and I rarely find it. Yet, people will share and discuss and comment and promote pieces that are really poorly written just because someone discloses something taboo or irreverent. It's like we applaud mediocrity all the time online. Now, don't get me wrong there are pockets of brilliance, you, kate, maggie, xtx, conscienceround, bhj, and a bunch of other. But, I see a lot of branding and bravado. The worst part, when you criticize any of it people just assume you are jealous or fearful. It makes me crazy. I don't know. I want to see the good in it. But, everywhere I turn people just seem to be following each other blindly without thought. It feels so obvious and at times desperate. I just want to write. I just want to participate in communities where people really love the written word. I don't feel that online. Maybe, it's me. Maybe it is all my own fault. I don't know.

Why do you love it? Don't you ever shake your head at any of it?

Here is my unedited reply:

You know what? I see inauthenticity at every I turn, too. It's bound to happen. Just look out at the world. People can be really lame, and they are, all the time. People often rise to meet only the lowest bar required to show signs of success.

It's like with children. Their answers to questions usually meet their perceived needs of the question. If you ask them how fast a car was going when it bumped the other car, they will say that it was going pretty fast. If you ask them how fast the car was going when it smashed really hard into that other speeding car, they will jump around and tell you about flying shrapnel. I think we are doing the same with success as bloggers. Most of us are merely meeting the perceived requirements of the question and not pushing ourselves further than the needs of that question or even questioning the question itself.

There is bound to be a lot of laziness, hard work, hacks, shining talents, inauthentic dweebs, and people who put their heart and soul into it, but I would never look at blogging as a whole and then say I don't feel love of the written word there or originality or thoughtfulness. I can't take any book off a bookstore shelf and say that the writing in it is even decent. I cannot look at the human race and say I say I see humanity in all of it, but here we are, and we still try to tease out the bits of us that work on this planet. That's what I try to do sometimes with stuff like Grace In Small Things to help people remember to stop being awful and this thing to try to introduce some thoughtfulness to our blogging.

One big problem with blogging is that we can drop in and find it rife with douchebags any day of the week, but that is generally the problem with life outside the internet, too. I try to avoid the douchebags and focus on those who further themselves and their craft. It's not about putting blinders on and more like learning to live on the internet the way I live out in the real world where people are just as brilliant and awful. I choose who I'll hang out with, where I want to go, how I want to present myself, and who I'll invest my care and time into.

I have no more faith in blogging than I have faith in a hammer or a car's engine. Blogging is a vehicle. I do have faith, though, at least to a certain extent, in myself and some of those I find here. I have faith in certain individuals and individual talent. Blogging, though? That's just the how.

So, why do I love it? Because I love how I do it and some others that I've found. Do I ever shake my head at any of it? Hells yeah.

Ask Schmutzie: Thrill-Seeking, Fun, And The Best And Worst Of Times

I asked you to ask me questions about my sobriety. This is my fourth response to your questions. Check out my first, second, and third sets of questions and answers.



A question that often gets brought up when talking to former addicts: were you ever addicted to the adrenaline rush that comes from knowing you quite literally can die in this moment, that a mere tip of the scales will decide on which side of the life line you will land?
     — Barbara@TheMiddleAges

There is apparently a gene identified with thrill-seeking behaviour, and I definitely do not have it. My father coerced me into going on a kiddie roller coaster once when I was ten, and I still hold it against him.

Sometimes I did want to die, but I was less attached to looking for an adrenaline rush and more attached to the then-chronic depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation I used alcohol, in part, to outrun.


I'll ask you the question I get asked the most from those contemplating sobriety: What do you do for fun?
     — Tricky

This question is surprisingly difficult to answer. I have spent the majority of my fall, winter, and early spring primarily engaged in not drinking and not running back to that pub where most of my social life happened, so what I do mostly looks like sitting at home. The relative quietude of my life since I quit drinking, though, belies the joy I am finding in living the full psychological/intellectual/emotional experience of my life without being anaesthetized against it.

It turns out that hanging out at non-drinking events like movies in theatres and podcast recordings are more than thieves of good drinking time.

So, what I do for fun these days is soak up whatever I do sober — whether it be writing, recording a podcast, or talking with the Palinode — and relish my ability not only to actively take part but also to recall it later. It's amazing how much more interesting life can seem when you are actually able to remember how you've been occupying your time.


What is your worst memory from your drinking days? What is your best one? What is your worst memory so far from your new sobriety days? What is your best one?
     — Bobbi

When I originally read this question, I thought it would be so easy to answer, but as soon as I tried to nail down a best time and a worst time, my entire twenty-some years of drinking came back to me.

The thing is, as a grand avoidance tactic, I think part of what I was looking for was the best of times every time I sat down with a beer. I wanted epic conversations, epic parties, epic play, and I got it a lot, or at least the self-induced rush of it, because alcohol made me feel energetic in between the first glass and the eventual glimmer of a blackout, indefatigable even. I was on.

And so I was on throughout most, if not all, of my major life events over the last more than twenty years. I was intoxicated both times I got engaged. I drank before I walked down the aisle at my wedding. I was drunk during most of my sexual encounters. I was good and tipsy whenever I met any of my blogging heros. And it is the same for my worst events. When being out and being social was pretty much synonymous with being drunk, almost all of my best and worst times were drunk best and worst times. Being drunk was no longer a special occasion separate from the rest of my life; it was my life outside my house.

What I'm saying is that it doesn't mean much to ask about best and worst drunk times when almost all of my life events were drunk times. Being drunk is barely a differentiating characteristic when talking about the events of my past.

When it comes to defining the best and worst times of my recent sobriety, I am doing my best not to cast my experiences since August into good or bad categories. I am too close to the now, to making it through one day at a time, to be able to look at the broader picture and pick out a best and worst.

Sober life has been hard, and, although I haven't liked most of it, I deeply value all of it. I am learning to live a daily life that doesn't involve the constant pursuit of anaesthetization and instead to live one that embraces and honours real movement both within and without.

My new sobriety has been both the best and the worst of times, and I don't think I can effectively pick one apart from the other right now without losing the integrity of the whole.