I found a cool thing for tired minds

On the website "About.com" , Jennifer Wolf hosts a community for Single Parents, and I stumbled across a good thing for me, that I thought I'd share with you. It's a writing prompt. Well, she calls it a "Guided Journal", but either way, it's nice to have someone else thinking up the hard part, and alls we have to do is write about it. I'm pretty sure it says I'm getting one in my email, daily, for a month, so as long as my internet server is functioning, I'll be attempting to get something in here every day.
What do you really appreciate about your life right now? Take some time to make a list of all the things you're thankful for.

Ahhhh, yessss, the ol' Gratitude List trick! I remember when I used to HATE it when the topic in a meeting was GRATITUDE. That word just GRATED on my nerves. Not so much, any more. Nowadays, I THANK GOD that I am able to see outside of myself enough, fairly often, to be consciously grateful. I'm even grateful sometimes, for things that don't directly benefit me at all! There are so many things I have to be thankful for today, that I am not even going to attempt to make a list. Here are the first few things that pop into my mind, for you to consider:
I am grateful that I have a job, even a VERY part-time one, where I know that I am making a difference every day.
I am grateful that when I had my extreme emotional freak-out the other day, my man talked to me and listened to me and showed me the kind of communication and caring that I don't think I've ever had on any kind of regular basis, with a man.
I am grateful that I've been around the block enough to know that in this scenario, with this man, I have the priorities of a much more grounded and mature, long-term kind of a woman. The things that used to be "must haves" like the fireworks and semi-obsessed feelings aren't there, and I KNOW that it's a GOOD thing!
I am grateful that I am in a position to get ahold of information that will enable me to do a better job in helping my boys navigate the next years of their lives, than I easily could have been, had the Lord not been steering for the most part.
Mostly, I am grateful that I don't make as ignorant or destructive choices, left to my own devices, as I so often used to...and not nearly as often.
My future looks pretty bright from here. Ironically, the recession isn't that big of a deal to me, because I've not got much of anything to lose. It seems that the wise job-seekers, now, would be investing their time and money in learning to grow a garden and the ways & means of doing that for a larger part of the year than usual. With prices of food going up, and so many people losing their jobs, it seems obvious to me that the smart cookies will be going into farming on one level or another.
Living off the grid is sounding smarter and more imperative all the time, if ya ask me.