Messy thankfulness

Today is Day 42 since measures of quarantine, isolation and social distancing were put in place in Montreal, and I must say that life is really quite messy right now. It's just not the same messy for everyone. For me, I have good days and bad days and in-between days. Good days are ... well... good. On the bad days, I really struggle. In general, my level of fatigue is at an all-time high and my level of productivity is at an all-time low. I struggle with insomnia at night. I struggle to get out of bed in the morning. I struggle with having a feeling of daily purpose. I struggle with being alone for hours every day while Hal is at work. I struggle with the daily decontamination/disinfection routine that we go through when Hal comes home from work. I struggle with arming myself with a face mask and lysol wipes when it is time to do the laundry. I struggle to do any of the things that I could do in the apartment right now.

I came across this article and broadcast recently on why people may be feeling so exhausted right now. It's interesting and talks about how the velocity of change that we are experiencing has upended our entire lives, taken away our habits, thrown everything into disarray, and made it such that the right decision is no longer obvious when it comes to something as simple as going to the grocery store... which quite frankly is exhausting. That said, it also talks about how this time can be an opportunity for us to slow down, be patient, allow ourselves and other people to make mistakes and be forgiven, and look for ways in which the future after the pandemic can bring about positive changes to our pre-pandemic lifestyles.

Slowing down, being patient and forgiving, looking for the positive... I'll add being thankful to that list because I have been thinking a lot about thankfulness recently. A friend of mine is doing a 365-day gratitude challenge. She is doing it on Facebook so, every day, she writes a post about what she is thankful for that day. As of the day of this post, she is on Day 244. Even though life is so messy and hard right now and so many of our freedoms have temporarily been taken away from us, it doesn't mean that our reasons to be thankful have also disappeared and it encourages me that she has continued her daily gratitude posts. Her daily sources of thankfulness have certainly changed, but she can still find a reason to be thankful each and every day.

As I shared in an earlier post, one of the first photos that Hal and I took together was in a Caribou Coffee in Denver, Colorado. In that coffee shop, there was a chalkboard filled with the various expressions of those who had been there to enjoy their drink of choice. I cannot remember if there was a specific topic for the writings on that chalkboard, but I think it was pretty random and open. Hal and I added our names to the board. 💕 The board was messy and there was writing all over the place and in every direction and in every color, but you can still see our names and they still stand out.

It was in thinking about our current situation and that chalkboard that I started thinking about "messy thankfulness". I realized that thankfulness can be really messy these days because it means looking past the struggle, the anguish, and the fatigue to find a reason for gratitude. There are still lots of reasons to be thankful, but they're a bit... or sometimes even a lot... harder to see in the midst of such struggle.

That's when I came up with this idea for a gratitude project for our home. I bought a large piece of poster paper, some colored markers and found a place to post it in our apartment so that we can see it every day. Every day, Hal and I are each going to write something on it for which we are thankful that day. It will obviously start out as being easy to read, but will become messier with each passing day as we will eventually have to look for places to write or just write on top of something else with a different colored marker.

This will be my daily reminder that thankfulness is possible in the middle of such a mess... and that messy thankfulness can be a beautiful thing.

What are you thankful for today?