Gratitude

Over at Korie's Blog, We Will Always Have Paris, she started my little gray cells (thank you Agatha) bubbling away with her post on Tuesday:

"Creating this layout inspired me to start journaling for this month -- May 2009. I think it will be fun to go through these layouts years from now and laugh about what I was loving at the time. I'm sure ten years from now, I'll point this layout out to my husband and say something like, "Remember blogs?"."

She has done this to me before (I think last year, but I didn't act on the subliminal message) ..... I started thinking about my many gratitude journals I use to keep in the 90s and early 2000s. I stopped a few years after I had open heart surgery the end of 2003. I kept one through 04 and then started traveling and kept one now and then (still keep one now and then now...). Don't really know why I stopped writing every day except life started getting full of other things to do once the heart valve was repaired and I was bursting with energy.

Yes, I have some visual journals, some art journals, some craft notebooks to put bits and pieces in -- BUT I don't have a current gratitude journal. I'm thinking, thanks to my Korie, that it might be time to start this exercise again. Maybe for one month. I was also pushed this way by the purchase of the digital copy of ART journaling by Somerset Studio. I highly recommend that you purchase a copy for $9.99. I also see they are offering a copy on a CD which will cost you $9.99 plus shipping & handling. Very easy to download.

SO, too many messages are being sent my way by the munchkins in the universe. ..... Would you believe I found a "Gratitude Journal" Stamp -- I know - NO WAY... Yes I did!

It is also true that if you write down 5 things you are grateful for each night, you do become a more positive person. I have no doubt about this. I had a lot of trouble doing that in 1998 when my mother died. Had trouble with that when my Cricket baby boy kitty died in April 2005 - and that might have been the last time I wrote in a "gratitude journal." I remember writing a tribute to him and closed the book.

SO, once again - too many little messages streaming my way, so, so, so ----- here is what I am going to try to do....... I bought a book at Queen's Ink when I had a class with Claudine Hellmuth and put it aside. I grabbed it last night and started working ON it not "in" it! I would like to take a photo each day of something to put in the journal. I love the red book and loved the tag I had purchased last year (yes, I was hoarding it.... but the right moment came along to use it).

You wanna journal with me for one month - it is not a life time? At least write down five things you are grateful for that day. That's all. Five little things. At the end of the month, let me know how you feel! Check in with me and I will also let you know how I'm doing.... so many books, so little time... sounds like a Twilight Zone episode in the making. (Some of you may be way to young to remember that one episode with Burgess Meredith!) dododododododododododo (twilight show theme song.....)