2-7-10 grateful for today

1. Asking for what I want without attachment
2. True friends
3. My writing ability
4. Cool weather
5. My adorable dog
6. Showers
7. Sweat pants
8. Motivation
9. Excitement
10. Accomplishment

My writing ability. I live for the edit! To know that I can go back and edit something lets me write fearlessly, putting thought to paper without "the committee" getting involved to block it. What I have found out is that a lot of what I write is quite good the first go round. I'm usually just rearranging the sentences for flow and changing wording here and there to make what I'm writing just a bit clearer.

I wrote some difficult, required things today. I wrote several paragraphs recommending myself for a program that I have a strong desire to be invited to participate in. I also wrote requests to people I would like letters of recommendation from. Both forms of that writing have one thing in common: forcing me to look at what is good and talented about me. I'm getting better at it. There's only the tiniest shadow of myself yelling at me that I'm not good enough, nobody would recommend me. I'm grateful that that part of myself is so tiny that it is getting really hard to hear. I am wonderful and amazingly talented. You'll see quite often that I have put "My creative abilities" on my gratitude lists. It is on my list so often because I am grateful, and to remind me that I have them.

The flip-side of that coin is being humble. I have in the past gotten a big head with praise and knowing I have produced an amazing piece of work. I'll be in my head thinking that I'm the only person in the world capable of producing such work. I've recently become aware that I have no working definition for humble. I realize that this is a quality that I desire and it feels kind of weird to have a desire for a quality that I don't have a working definition for. I feel like I have the seed beginnings of understanding what humble feels like. I've started with discarding what I thought it was. I know being humble is not feeling shame. Hopefully I'll be able to put Humble on my gratitude list soon.

That's my 15 minutes (no time to edit, it's a first draft).