Being Thankful

Happy Turkey Day! I have to admit that as an adult, Thanksgiving really isn't a holiday I'd prefer to celebrate. There are multiple reasons why I don't care for the holiday, but that's another story for another day. For me, I choose to look at Thanksgiving as a day when I get to enjoy four of my favorite things in life: food, family, football and fun. I do appreciate the concept of making the day about gratitude and thankfulness, which I think we should do more of on a normal basis. The day is a nice reminder that with the busyness of everyday life, sometimes we do forget to say thank you. Sometimes we forget to sit and breathe for a moment, to really absorb the blessings, even the atom-sized ones, in our lives. It's also a wonderful day because it's pretty much the last normal day of the year. The holiday season kicks off with a bang tomorrow, and after that's it's full-on Christmas craziness, which I am dreading yet crazy excited for. So on that note, I thought I'd share some things I'm grateful for today. Some are 'deep,' some aren't. There's no order of importance here. 

1. I'm grateful that when I jammed my toes down to the bone a few days ago I didn't break anything.

In the latest edition of "I'm A Walking FML," I jammed three of the toes on my left foot down to the bone running from a rodent and my foot erupted in pain. For awhile I was worried I'd broken something in there, but thankfully I just jammed the shit out of them. lol I can finally walk a bit on it again but the swelling and bruising are keeping me from putting too much weight on it or overdoing it. As a result, a pair of crutches have become my new best friends. But nothing's broken, so I'll gladly deal with the pain in my armpits and the inconvenience of having to limp everywhere. Plus, now I get to exercise my weak ass arm muscles so there's a silver lining in this somewhere. LOL

2. I'm grateful that I'm finally gaining the "DGAF" factor enough to just be myself. 

Not that I've never not been myself, but I've always been apologetic about who I was. How stupid does that sound, right? I'm not the type of person who is or does things that I should be apologizing for, but I often feel like I should be apologizing to everyone all the time for not being 'enough.' It's nice to gain the ability with age to just say "Eff it," and be myself. So I'm not necessarily charismatic. I'm never going to be the life of the party. I ramble and have a bad tendency to repeat myself when I'm telling a story. I'm always going to have anxiety and that's going to cause multiple obstacles for me, which may become inconvenient for others in my life. I prefer my own company to the company of others. But I'm me, and I'm happy with me. And as self-conscious, self-doubting and scared as I am on a daily basis, the growing seed of DGAF will be a welcomed addition to my life. 

3. I'm grateful that as I write this, my favorite QB of all time is back in Lambeau to get his jersey retired. 

I've been a proud Cheesehead for nearly a decade now, and a healthy amount of that reason is named Brett Favre. It's funny, I've been a fan for more of the Rodgers years than the Favre ones, but it was Favre who opened my eyes to them in the first place. After the acrimonious split between Favre and the Packers and especially after he signed to the Vikings (and played against the Packers in Lambeau before retiring....as a Viking), I really didn't think I'd ever see Favre back in Lambeau Field again. But it's a great night to be a Packer fan....despite the fact that they played some really shit ball tonight. LOL We've got two of the GOATS in the house, Bart Starr (who went through hell and high water to be in Green Bay tonight) and Brett Favre, with a soon-to-be great in Rodgers. I don't know how many times this will happen again, and I'm beyond thankful that I got to see it. 

4. I'm thankful that as of the time of this posting, there were no terror attacks or attempts in the country. 

I'd originally explained my reasoning behind this one, but then I thought, do I really have to elaborate on why I'm grateful for that? 

5. I'm grateful that my family, despite being separated this year, is all alive and healthy and had food to eat. 

There have been many years where we weren't sure how we were going to eat on Thanksgiving and even on the years where we at least have some of the food guaranteed, it's always a bit of a concern. For low-income families like mine, the fun that should come with the holiday season is usually overwhelmed with financial worries. This year, everyone had food to eat. We usually come together for the holidays, but today we were a bit separated. My brother is at home with his family, but they had food. My uncle's family is all over the place, but none of them went hungry today. We had more than enough and were able to give our turkey away. That doesn't happen to us very often, but I'm extremely thankful that it happened this year. 

6. I'm grateful that I have somewhere to express myself. 

I don't know what I'd do without the Internet and the power of self-expression. These blogs, despite being crazy disorganized and sometimes neglected, have really seen me through some tough times and helped me figure out what I wanted out of my life. I know being a blogger doesn't seem like much and at one time I would have agreed, but at one time I also used to think that I was just going to do one thing, have one industry as a career, for the rest of my life. Blogging and vlogging showed me that you can have a multi-faceted career, you can have stages of your career, and it doesn't have to be a 'traditional' job in order to be as valid as those in traditional industries. Blogging gave me a voice and allowed me to see that others can do this for a living. Review blogging is something I think I can be really good at, and I never would have considered it for a career detour had the Internet not been around to help me understand and see the benefit of 'non-traditional' paths. There are many things that blogging has given me, but one of the most important things is my voice. Where I couldn't get past my social anxiety in real life to be myself, I was able to come online and speak my mind, indulge in my interests (obsessively hunting down movie scores and reading smut are two of those interests....I know. Real classy, right?) and find new ones. I can't see being a blogger for the rest of my life, but for the time that this is what I want to do, I have a platform to do it on. And I'm really grateful for that.

7. I'm grateful for you!!

Whoever you are, wherever you are, whatever brought you here, if you're reading this, I'm grateful to you. It's harder for smaller blogs like RRNT to get the visibility that major blogs get, and it's even harder for us to gain a loyal following. I'm finally getting somewhere with ATV, but RRNT hasn't seen the same results just yet. So if you've stumbled on my random little smorgasbord somehow, please know that you have my gratitude and appreciation for sticking around to read even one post.

Those are some of the things that I'm thankful for this year. Again, this was just a partial list; I didn't feel the need to go through every single thing that I felt grateful for. What are some things you're thankful for this year?