Today is Thanksgiving Day here in Canada. This year has been a rough one for me. I don’t really feel like being thankful right now, so it is all the more important I do my yearly exercise of “counting my blessings”.
I am thankful:
- For having been offered work at the moment when I most needed it. Without it, we would have been in serious financial trouble. I’m thankful, too, to have had the freedom of refusing to take more work when I felt I was burning-out;
- For my husband getting a job in his field after four years of doing odd jobs. It’s a temporary job, but I hope that’ll help him reintegrate the industry;
- To have found a way to rewrite and edit my novel, despite my recent lack of time and energy to actually do it;
- To have had the perseverance to post blog articles almost weekly – that’s the same stubborn perseverance that made me burn-out instead of “taking it easy for a while”, but hey, nobody can have everything;
- For my NaNoWriMo community, that has become a year-round writing community. The members are fun and supportive and I love them all;
- To have learned how to knit: it helped a lot to get my mind off things when I started my burn-out leave and improve my mood – plus now I have stylish hand-knitted mittens that fit perfectly;
- For my daughter, my little hyperactive and hypersociable princess, becoming more independent every day;
- To have had the means of taking a creative writing course, which I am loving so far;
- To have had to opportunity to beta-read Marnie Shaw and the Mystery of Yapton Farm; it was an interesting experience and I think the book has great potential.
Everything considered I guess my year wasn’t that bad. Of course, that doesn’t change the fact that I’m currently burned-out, but it helps put things into perspective. In a year, that will only be a small bump in the road… not to mention that it might help me find a more sustainable solution.
Happy Thanksgiving to all Canadians!
Ida Auclond 
And to you Ida! Along with my grateful list (which is expansive, as merely being healthy and alive is invigorating!) we are waking to a magical, beautiful day on the West Coast. 🙂
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Appreciate your glass half full point of view!
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Happy thanksgiving! It’s great you can still see the positive things even though you are having a hard time right now.
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Beautiful post and beautiful artwork Ida. Inspiring!
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Happy Thanksgiving to you too!
Not sure if it was part of the same situation, but your comment about your husband finally getting a job in his field, it made me wonder if he was another casualty in the Alberta economic downturn.
My husband lost his engineering position back in 2015, and though he was one of the lucky ones to get another job, it eventually ended up leading us on a very different, and much more fulfilling, journey.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that even when there doesn’t seem to be much to be thankful for, there’s a much bigger picture, so I try to be thankful in all situations.
– Christine
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Happy Thanksgiving! I am glad you still find good moments even when the year has been tough on you.
– Michelle
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