#AtoZChallenge: E is for Every Day Gratitude

I’m grateful for photo ops in antique stores when I happen to have a stormtrooper in my pocket.

My journal has taken a beating.

Literally and figuratively. Before last night, I hadn’t written in it for weeks. Also, the back cover has fallen off. There are about five pages left in her, and it looks like it spent a season getting kicked around on Gilligan’s Island.

Gratitude is easy to come back to, it seems.

It wasn’t as if I’d abandoned #gratitudeandshit. It’s part of every day. It just wasn’t getting written down. So I had some old things in there. Things such as, I’m grateful for new episodes of Silver Spoons and I’m grateful for my new calculator watch.

(That’s not true. My parents never got me a calculator watch.)

I am happy that lots of gratitude are ongoing. And not so petty. Sure, I’m grateful Mr. Havarti invented cheese and Brooke Shields has an active Instagram account, but there’s so much more to be thankful for, too. Including you. Reading this. Thanks, boo.

What else am I grateful for, you might be wondering …

I’m grateful to have spent every season since the Carolina Panthers’ inception covering them for someone or other.

1-New friends, excited about #GirlsRock. I have the honor of some incredible women interviewing now for future posts. This is important to me. My girls know there are no limits to what they can do. These women live that.

2-Madison’s coaching tendencies. She’s helping on Camdyn’s team. I love to see parts of my influence on her mixed with what she brings exclusively her own. She’s a smart, compassionate leader who loves when she can help a player make a breakthrough.

3-Camdyn’s leadership. She plays on an inexperienced team and finds herself doing lots of the work. I know it’s frustrating. But ultimately, she helps her teammates and wants them to love the game as she does. And it’s working. I love that she thrives in this.

There’s a soft-serve ice cream machine in the Panthers’ press box. When I’m feeling sleepy, I make a Mountain Dew Ice Cream Float. It’s basically a salad.

4-Hayden’s patience. I so miss watching Madison and Hayden play. I know it’s tough to miss your senior season, to see games lost that she could have impacted. But she’s imparting knowledge on a young team and with us every step of the way.

5-Runs in the park when the air is so cold. Not so much these days, but a couple of weeks ago … the cold air burns your lungs. It reminds me of basketball practices in Colorado with gym doors open to the harsh winter air. It’s invigorating.

6-Habit ladders. Oh, I have plenty of habits. Destroying cans of Coke Zero. Crushing bags of animal cookies. Binging on Reign on Netflix (Hi, Queen Elizabeth!) Habit ladders help me to combine good things together to make the group more routine.

I’m a coffee drinker now. It was supposed to replace Coke Zero. Now, it keeps me from drinking Coke Zero until at LEAST 9:07 a.m. #progress

7-Tomato timers and grids. The Tomato Timer served me well but isn’t part of my routine anymore. I keep a to-do grid and have decided to reward myself through a complex system of productivity tracking. If I do well, I’ll buy myself a new lid here.

8-Walking onto the field. Our sideline. There’s just a lift that you get in your soul when you arrive on the playing grounds with your side. It’s pride, and it’s optimism. It’s getting there early enough to talk to players before things get real.

9-Meditation. It grounds and sustains me. I have a 70-day streak of meditating. It doesn’t make me perfect, but it does perfectly open my eyes to my good and weak points. It keeps me engaged where I am. It helps me not freak over the Rockies’ rocky start.

I’m grateful Belk Bowl officials let us go on the field in the last 2 minutes. It’s cool to get a feel for the game down there. It wasn’t such a good day for the Gamecocks.

10-Peeling away expectation and listening. The expectation is such a finite endpoint. To be open to an array of possibility is so liberating. Forgoing attachment to outcomes. The universe has such a better imagination than I.

What are you grateful for today?

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A to Z Challenge:

A is for Almost (and also At Last)

B is for Baggett (as in Laura, the actress, and #GirlsRock interview)

C is for Cursive, Cats, and Chinese Restaurants (Go Ask Daddy about them)

D is for Drawing the Line

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